Dear Tom:Please forgive any delay due to press of business. Just at present there is no vacancy, and frankly I would not advise you to take the step even if there were. I know you are young and impatient to be at work again, but I can not but feel thatyou would not be happy in making such a radical move, particularly when at any moment the opportunity you are looking for may turn up.
Dear Tom:
Please forgive any delay due to press of business. Just at present there is no vacancy, and frankly I would not advise you to take the step even if there were. I know you are young and impatient to be at work again, but I can not but feel thatyou would not be happy in making such a radical move, particularly when at any moment the opportunity you are looking for may turn up.
Cordially yours,J. N. Stoughton.
Granning came in as he was sitting by the wastebasket and slowly tearing this letter into minute shreds.
"Hello, young fellow—what luck?"
"I think I'm on," said Bojo, slowly, feeling all at once shelved and abandoned. "The last thing people downtown have any use for, Granning, is a busted broker!"
"You have found that out, have you?" said Granning quickly.
Bojo nodded.
"Well, you're right." He sat down. "See here, old sport, why don't you do the thing you ought to do?"
"What's that?"
"Go down and see the old man and tell him you're ready to start for the mills to-morrow!"
"No, no, I can't do that."
"You want to do it, at heart. It's only pride that's keeping you."
"Perhaps, but that pride means a lot to me," said Bojo doggedly. "Never! I'm not going to him a failure. So shut up about that."
"Well, what are you going to do?"
Bojo began to whistle, looking out the window.
"Suppose I were to offer you a job over at the factory?"
"Would you?" said Bojo, looking up with a leaping heart.
"That means starting in on rock bottom—as I did. Up at six, there at seven—beginning as a day laborer on a beautifully oily and smudgy blanking machine among a bunch of Polacks."
"Will you give me a chance?" said Bojo breathlessly.
"Will you stick it out?"
"You bet I will!"
"Done!"
And they shook hands with a resounding smack that seemed to explode all Bojo's pent-up feelings.
"All right, young fellow," said Granning with a grin. "To-morrow we'll find out what sort of stuff you're made of!"
The day he entered the employ of the Dyer-Garnett Caster and Foundry Company was like an open door into the wonderland of industry. The sun, red and wrapped in dull mists, came stolidly out of the east as they crossed the river in the unearthly grays, with electric lights showing in wan ferry-boats. When they entered the factory a few minutes before seven, the laborers were passing the time-clocks, punching their tickets, Polack and Saxon, Hun and American, Irish and Italian, the men a mixture of slouchy, unskilled laborers and keen, strong mechanics, home-owners and thinkers, the women of rather a higher class, bright-eyed, deft, with a prevailing instinct for coquetry.
In the offices Dyer, lanky New Englander, engineer and inventor, and Garnett, the president, self-made, simple and shrewd, both in their shirt sleeves, gave him a cordial welcome. Unbeknown to Bojo, Granning had given a flattering picture of his future destination as heir apparent to the famous Crocker mills and his progressive desire for preliminary experience in factories that were handling problems of labor-saving along modern lines.
"Glad to meet you," said Garnett, gripping his hand. "Mr. Granning tells me you want to see thewhole scheme from the bottom up. It's not playing football, Mr. Crocker."
"Hope not," said Bojo with a smile. "It's very good of you to give me an opportunity."
"Don't know how you'll feel about it after a couple of weeks. I'll get Davy—that's my son—to show you around. We're doing some things here you'll be interested in. Mr. Dyer's just installed some very pretty machines. Davy'll put you onto the ropes—he's just been through it. That's a great plant of your father's—went through it last year. Nothing finer in the country."
He found young Garnett a boy of twenty, just out of high-school, alert, eager, and stocked with practical knowledge. The morning he spent in exploration was a revelation. In his old prejudice against what he had confusedly termed business he had always recoiled as before a leveling process, stultifying to the imagination, a thing of mechanical movements and disciplined drudgery. He found instead his imagination leaping forward before the spectacle of each succeeding regiment of machines, before the teeming of progress, of the constant advance toward the harnessing of iron and steel things to the bidding of the human mind.
Cars were being switched at the sidings, unloading their cargoes of coiled steel; other cars were receiving the completed article, product of a score of intricate processes, stamped, turned, assembled, and hammered together, plated, lacquered, burnished, and packed for distribution. He had but a confused impression at first of these rooms of tireless wheels, automatic feeders and monstrous weights that sliced solid steellike paper. The noises deafened him: the sandy, grinding whirl of the tumbling room, the colliding shock of the blanking machines, the steel hiss of the burnishers—deafening voices that in the ensuing months were to become articulate utterances to his informed ears, songs of triumph, prophetic of a coming age.
In the burnishing-room grotesque human and inhuman arms reached down from a central pipe to the poisonous gases of the miniature furnaces.
"Granning's idea," said young Garnett. "Carries off the fumes. This room was a hell before. Now it's clean and safe as a garden. Here's a machine the Governor's just installed—does the work of six women. Isn't it a beauty?"
Bojo looked beyond it to the clustered groups of women by long counters piled with steel parts, working rapidly at slow, intricate processes of assembling.
"I suppose you'll get a machine some day to do all that too," he said.
"Sure. Wherever you see more than two at a job there's something to be done. Look here." They stood by a couple of swarthy Polack women, who were placing tiny plugs in grooves on round surfaces to be covered and fastened with ball-bearing casters. "Looks pretty tough proposition to get out of those fingers. We've worked two years at it, but we'll get them yet. It's the slug shape that makes it hard; the simple ball-bearings were a cinch. Here's how we worked that out."
A machine was under Bojo's eyes that caught the open roller and plunged it into a circular arena, where from six converging gates steel balls were released andfell instantly into place, a fraction of a second before the upper cover, descending, was fixed and hammered down.
"One hundred and fifty a minute against thirty to forty, and two operations made into one."
"But you can't do the same thing with an irregular slug," said Bojo, amazed.
"There's a way somehow," said Garnett, smiling at the tribute of his astonishment. "If you want to see what a machine can do, look at this, the pride of the shop."
"Who's watching it?" said Bojo, surprised to see no one in attendance.
"Not a soul. It's a wise old machine. All we do is to fill up the hamper once an hour, and it goes ahead, feeds itself, juggles a bit, hammers on a head, and fills up its can, two hundred a minute."
In a large feeding-box, a tangled mass of small steel pins, banded at one end, were rising and falling, settling and readjusting themselves. A thin grooved plate rose and fell into the mass, sucking into its groove, or catching in its upward progress, from one to six of the pins, which, perpendicularly arranged, slid down to a new crisis. Steel fingers caught each pin as released, threw it with a half turn into another groove, where it was again passed forward and fixed in shape for the crushing hammer blow that was to flatten the head. A safety-device based on exact tension stopped the machine instantly in case of accident.
"Suffering Moses, is it possible!" said Bojo, staring like a schoolboy. "Never saw anything like it."
"Gives you an idea what can be done, doesn't it?"
"It does!"
Then he began to see these strangely human machines and these mechanical human beings in a larger perspective, in a constant warfare, each ceaselessly struggling with the other, each unconsciously being fashioned in the likeness of his enemy.
"When we've got the human element down to the lowest terms, then we'll fight machines with machinery, I suppose," said Garnett.
"Makes you sort of wonder what'll be done fifty years from now," said Bojo.
"Doesn't it?" said Garnett. "I wouldn't dare tell you what the Governor talks about. You'd think he's plum crazy."
"By George, I feel like starting now."
"Same way I did," said Garnett, nodding. "I suppose what you'll want will be to follow the whole process from the beginning. It gives you a general idea. I say, that's a great machine your father's just installed."
He began to expatiate enthusiastically on an article he had read in a technical paper, assuming full knowledge on Bojo's part, who listened in wonder, already beginning to feel, beyond the horizon of these animated iron shapes, the mysterious realms of human invention he had so long misunderstood.
The next morning, in overalls and flannels, he took his place in the moving throngs and found his own time-card, a numbered part of a great industrial battalion. He was apprenticed to Mike Monahan, a grizzled, good-humored veteran, whose early attitude of suspicion disappeared with Bojo's plunge into grime and grease. He was himself conscious of a strange bashfulness which he had never experiencedin his contact with Wall Street men. It seemed to him that these earnest, life-giving hordes of labor must look down on him as a useless, unimportant specimen. When he came to take his place in the early morning, sorting out his time-card, he was conscious of their glances and always felt awkward as he passed from room to room. Gradually, being essentially simple and manly in his instincts, he won his way into the friendly comprehension of his associates, living on their terms, seeking their company, talking their talk, with a dawning avid curiosity in their points of view, their needs, and their opinions of his own class.
Garnett had not exaggerated when he had said that the work was not playing football. There were days at first when the constant mental application and the mechanical iteration amid the dinning shocks in the air left him completely fagged in mind and body. When he returned home it was with no thought of theater or restaurant, but with the joy of repose. Moreover, to his surprise, he found that he awaited the arrival of Sunday eagerly for the opportunity of reading along the lines where his imagination had been stirred. As he studied the factory closer, his pleasure lay in long discussions with Granning over such subjects as the utilization of refuse, the possible saving of time in the weekly cleanings by some process of construction which might permit of quicker concentration, or the possibility of further safety-devices.
He saw Doris every Sunday, in the afternoon, often staying for the dinner and departing soon after. Patsie was never present at these meals. A monthlater, he heard that she had left on a round of visits. Mr. Drake often made humorous allusions to his enforced servitude, but never attempted to sway his course, being too good a judge of human nature to underestimate the intensity of the young man's convictions. Doris had completely changed in her attitude toward him. She no longer sought to direct, but seemed content to accept his views in quiet submission. He found her simple and straightforward, patiently resigned to wait his decisions. He could not honestly say to himself that he was madly in love, yet he owned to a feeling of growing respect and genuine affection.
Matters went on according to the routine of the day without much change while the spring passed into the hot stretches of summer. The exigencies of the life of discipline he had enforced on himself had withdrawn him more and more from the intimate knowledge of the every-day life of Marsh, whose hours did not coincide with his, and of DeLancy, who, since the episode of the speculation in Pittsburgh & New Orleans, had, from a feeling of unease, seemed to avoid his old friends. Occasionally in her letters from the country Doris mentioned the fact that Gladys had been to visit her and that she thought Fred was rather neglectful; but beyond that he was completely ignorant of his friend's sentimental standing either with Gladys or with Louise Varney, so that what happened came to him like a bolt out of the blue.
Toward the end of July Fred DeLancy married Louise Varney.
It was on a Friday night when Marsh, after anunusual tarrying in the den, was preparing to return to the office, that DeLancy, to their surprise, came into the room. In response to their chorused welcome, he flung back a curt acknowledgment, looked around gravely in momentary hesitation, and finally installed himself on the edge of a chair, bending forward, his hat between his knees, turning in his hands. The others exchanged glances of interrogation, for such seriousness on Fred's part usually presaged a scrape or disaster.
"Well, infant, why so solemn?" said Marsh. "Been getting into trouble lately?"
DeLancy looked up and down.
"Nope."
"There's not much information in that," said Marsh cheerily. "Well, what's the secret sorrow? Out with it!"
"There's nothing wrong," said DeLancy quietly. He began to whistle, staring at the floor.
"Oh, very well," said Marsh in an offended tone.
They sat, watching him, for quite a moment, in silence. Finally DeLancy spoke, slowly and monotonously:
"I have made up my mind to a serious decision!"
Again they waited without questioning him, while he frowned and seemed to choose his words.
"You will think I have gone out of my head, I suppose. Well—I am going to be married—to-night—at eleven."
"Louise Varney?" said Marsh, jumping up, while Granning and Bojo stared at each other blankly.
"Yes."
"You damned fool!"
At this Fred started up wildly with an oath, but Granning interposed with a warning cry.
"You fool—you idiot!" cried Marsh, furiously. "Shoot yourself—cut your throat—but don't—don't do that!"
"Shut up, Roscy, that does no good!" said Bojo quickly. He seized Fred by the wrist: "Fred, honestly—you're going to marry her to-night?"
DeLancy nodded, his mouth grim.
"Oh, Fred, you don't know what you're doing!"
"Yes, I do," he said, sitting down. "It's nothing hasty. It's been coming for months. I know what I'm doing."
"But—but the other—Fred, you can't—in decency you can't—not like this."
"Shut up!" said DeLancy, wincing.
"No, no, you can't like this," said Bojo indignantly.
"By heavens, he sha'n't," said Marsh angrily. "If we have to tie him up and keep him here—he's not going to ruin two lives like this, the lunatic!"
"Go easy," said Granning, with a warning glance.
But, contrary to expectation, Fred did not resent the attack. When he spoke, it was with a shrug of his shoulders, in a tired, unresisting voice:
"It's no use, Roscy. It's settled and done for."
"Why, Fred, old boy, can't you see clear?" said Roscy, coming to him with a changed tone. "Don't you know what this means? You're not a fool. Think! I'm not saying a word against Louise."
"You'd better not!" said Fred, flushing.
"Her character's as good as any one else's—granted that. But, Fred, that's not all. She's not ofyour world, her mother's not—her friends are not. If you marry her, Fred, as sure as there's a sun in heaven, you're ended, done for; you're dropped out of the world and you'll never get back!"
"Well, I'm going to do it," said DeLancy, stubbornly.
"You're going to do it and deliberately throw over every friend and every attachment you've got in life?"
"I don't admit that."
"What are you going to live on?" said Granning.
"I've got the money I made and what I make."
"What you make now," said Marsh, seizing the opening, "what you make because you know people and bring down customers! You yourself said it. But when you drop out of society you'll drop out of business. You know it."
"I may fool you yet," said Fred angrily.
"You think you can play the Wall Street game and beat it," said Bojo, divining his thought. "Fred, if you marry, whatever else you do—quit gambling." Knowing more than the others, he had from the first known the hopelessness of argument. Still he persisted blindly. "Fred, can't you wait and think it over—let us talk it over with you?"
"I can't, Bojo, I can't. I've given my word!"
"Good God!" said Marsh, raising his hands to heaven in fury.
"Fred, can't you see what Roscy says is true?" said Granning, quieter than the rest.
"Even so, I'm going to do it," said Fred, in a low voice.
"But why?"
"Because I'm crazy, mad in love," said Fred, jumping up and pacing around. "Infatuated?—Yes!—Mad?—Yes! But there it is. I can't do without her. I've been like a wild man all these months. Whether it ruins me or not, I can't help it— I've got to have her, and that's all there is to it!"
"Then I guess that's all there is to it," repeated Granning solemnly.
Marsh swore a fearful oath and went out.
"I want to talk to him a moment," said Bojo, turning to Granning with a nod. Granning went into the bedroom, while Bojo drew nearer to DeLancy. "Fred, let's talk this over quietly."
"Oh, I know what you're going to fling at me," said Fred miserably. "Gladys and all that. I know I'm a beast, I've no excuse. But, Bojo, I'm half wild! I don't know what I'm doing—honest I don't!"
"Is it as bad as all that, old fellow?" said Bojo, shaking his head.
"It's awful—awful." He sat down, burying his head in his hands.
"Fred, answer me—do you yourselfwantto do this?"
"How do I know what I want!" he said breathlessly. He raised his head, staring in front. "I suppose it will end me with the crowd. I suppose that's true. Bojo, I know everything that it will do to me—everything. I know it's suicide. But, Bojo, that doesn't do any good. Reasoning doesn't do any good—what's got to be has got to be! Now I've told you. You'll see it's no use."
"I hope it will work out better than we think," said Bojo, solemnly. "And Gladys?"
"I wrote to her."
"When?"
"Yesterday." He hesitated. "Her letters and one or two things—they're done up in a pile."
"I'll get them to her."
"Thank you." He turned. "I say, Bojo, stand by me in this, won't you? I've got to have some one. Will you?"
"All right. I'll come."
At eleven o'clock in a little church up in Harlem he stood by DeLancy's side while the words were said that he knew meant the end of all things for him in the worldly world he had chosen for his own. It was more like an execution, and Bojo had a guilty, horribly guilty, feeling, as though he were participating in a crime.
"Louise looks beautiful," he found the heart to whisper.
"Yes, doesn't she?" said Fred gratefully, with such a sudden leap in the eyes that Bojo felt something choking in his throat.
He waved them good-by after he had put them in the automobile, and took Mrs. Varney and a Miss Dingler, the maid of honor, home in a taxi. It was all very gloomy, shoddy, and depressing.
It was toward the end of August, when the dry exhaustion of the summer had begun to be touched with the healing cool of delicious nights, that Bojo and Granning were lolling on the window-seat, busy at their pipes. Below in the Court foggy shapes were sunk in cozy chairs under the spread of the great cotton umbrella, and the languid echoes of wandering, contented conversation came to them like the pleasant closing sounds of the day across twilight fields—the homing jingle of cattle, the returning creak of laden wagons seeking the barns, or a tiny distant welcome from a barking throat.
"Ouf! It's good to get a lung-full of cool air again," said Bojo, turning gratefully to an easier position.
"Well, how do you like being a horny-handed son of toil?" said Granning.
"I like it."
"You're through the worst of it now."
"It's sort of like being in training again," said Bojo reminiscently. "Jove, how they used to drive us in the fall—the old slave drivers! It's great, though, to feel you've earned the right to rest. I say, Granning, it's a funny thing, but you know that first raise, ten dollars a week, thrilled me more thanmaking thirty thousand in a clip. Come to think of it, I don't believe I ever really made that money."
"You didn't."
Bojo laughed. "Well, this is a man's life," he said evasively. Then suddenly: "What precious idiots we were that first night, prophesying our lives. Poor old Freddie, who was going to marry a million and all that—and weren't we indignant, though, at him! A fine grave he's dug for himself now. Queer."
"I like him better than if he'd married the other girl in cold blood."
"Yes, I suppose I do too. Still—" He broke off. "Do you believe he's had the sense to get out of the market?"
"No," said Granning shortly.
"Good Lord, if I thought that, I'd—"
"You'd do nothing. You can't help him—neither can I or any one. After all—don't think I'm hard, but what does it matter what happens to fellows like Fred DeLancy? What's important is what happens to men who've got power and energy and are trying to force their way up. Men you and I know—"
"That's rather cruel."
"Well, life is cruel. My sympathy is with the fellow that's knocking for opportunity, not the fellow who's throwing it away. Bojo, the salvation of this country isn't in making sinecures for good-natured, lovable chaps of the second generation, but in sorting 'em out and letting the weak ones fall behind. Keep open the doors to those who are coming up."
"I don't think you've ever forgiven Fred for takingthat money," said Bojo reluctantly. "You don't like him."
"I did like him—but I've grown beyond him—and so have you," said Granning bluntly. In the last few months he had come to speak his mind directly to Bojo, with results that sometimes shocked the younger man.
At this moment the telephone rang.
"Shuffle over to it," said Granning, withdrawing his legs. "No one ever telephones for me."
"It may be from Fred—perhaps they're back," said Bojo, departing.
He came back in a few moments rather excited.
"That's queer—it's from Doris."
"Been rather neglectful, haven't you?"
"It wasn't long distance. She's here!"
"Here—in town?"
"Yes. Funny she didn't warn me," said Bojo, mystified. He dug out his hat from the crowded desk and halted before the reclining figure. "Well, I'm summoned. Sorry to leave you. Felt just like rambling along."
"Well, be firm."
"What?"
"Be firm."
"Now just what did he mean by that?" he said to himself as he tripped down the stairs and out. He puzzled more over this advice as he hastened uptown. Why had Doris come, abruptly and without notification? The more he thought of it, the more he believed he understood the reason of Granning's warning. Doris had come to him with some new proposition, an investment for quick returns or anopening along lines of increasing salaries. The open surface-car with its cargo of coatless men and shirt-waisted women went pounding up the Avenue, hurrying him toward Doris.
He would have been at loss to define to himself his real feelings. Despite the sudden awakening in her, the delirious quality of romance had not returned to him. Memories of another face and other hours had ended that. Yet there was a solid feeling of doing the right thing, of playing square by Doris, and of a responsibility well performed. In the long, crowded, heated weeks there were long intervals when he forgot her entirely. Yet when he saw her or opened her letters, poignant with solicitude and faith, he felt his imagination kindle, if but for the moment.
He had reached the self-conscious stage in youth when he looked upon himself as supernaturally old and tried in the furnace of experience. He quieted the dormant longings in his heart by assuring himself that he now took a different view of marriage, a more significant one as a grave social step. The less he felt the romance of their relations, the more he acknowledged the solid supplementary qualities which Doris would bring him as his companion, as associate and organizer of the home.
That he could not give her all that she now poured out unreservedly to him, gave him at times a twinge of pity and compassion. She was so keen to progress, to broaden the outlook of her views, to be of real service to him. There were moments in her letters of inner revelations that stirred him almost with the guilty feeling of surprising what was not his tosee. The idea of an early marriage would have been unbearable, yet as a possibility of the future it seemed to him an eminently wise and just procedure.
At the Drake mansion his ring was answered by a caretaker, who came doubtfully to let him in, pausing to search for the electric buttons. In the anteroom and down the vistas of the salons, everything was bare and draped in dust-clothes; there was a feeling of abandonment and loneliness in the bared arches, as on his first visit a year before.
"Bojo—is it you?"
He heard her voice descending somewhere from the upper flights of the great stone stairway, and answered cheerily. The caretaker disappeared, satisfied, and he waited at the foot while she came rushing down and hung herself in his arms.
"Why, Doris!" he exclaimed, surprised at her emotion and the tenseness of the figure that clung to him. "Doris, why, what's wrong?"
"Wait, wait," she said breathlessly, burying her head on his shoulder and tightening the grip of her arms.
She led him, still clinging to his side, through the ballroom and the little salon into the great library, where he had gone for his decisive interview with Drake. They stood a moment in filtered obscurity, groping for the buttons, until suddenly the room sprang out of the night. Then he saw that she had been weeping. Before he could exclaim, the tears sprang to her eyes and she flung herself in his arms again, sheltering her head against his shoulder, clinging to his protection as though reeling before the sudden down swoop of a storm. His first thought wasof death, a catastrophe in the family—father, mother—Patsie! At this thought his heart seemed to stop and he said brokenly:
"Doris, what is it—nothing has happened—no one is—is in danger?"
"No, no," she said in a whisper. "Oh, don't make me speak—not just yet. Keep your arms about me. Tighter so that I can never, never get away."
He obeyed, wondering, his mind alert, seeking a reason for this strange emotion. Suddenly she raised her head and, seizing his in her hands with such tenacity that he felt the cut of her sharp little fingers, kissed him with the poignant agony of a great separation.
"Bojo, remember this," she cried through her tears, "whatever happens—whatever comes—it is you—you! I shall love only you all my life—no one else!"
"Whatever happens?" he said, frowning, but beginning to have a glimmer of the truth. "What do you mean?"
She moved from him, standing, with head slightly down, staring at him silently for a long moment. Then she said, shaking her head slowly:
"Oh, how you will hate me!"
He went to her quickly and, taking her by the wrist, led her to the big sofa.
"Now sit down. Tell me just what this all means!"
His tone was harsh, and she glanced at him, frightened.
"It means," she said at last, "that I am not what you thought—what I thought I could be. I am notstrong. I've tried and I've failed! I am very, very weak, very selfish. I can't give up what I'm used to—luxury! I can't, Bojo, I can't—it's beyond me!" She turned away, her handkerchief to her eyes, while he sat without a word, compelling her to go on. At last she turned, stealing a look at his set face. "Of course you'll say you told me—but I tried— I did try!"
"I am saying nothing at all," he said quietly. "So you wish to end the engagement, that is all, isn't it?"
"All!" she said indignantly with a flood of tears. "Oh, how can you look at me so brutally? I am miserable, absolutely miserable. I am throwing away my life, my whole chance of loving, of being happy, and you look at me as though you were sending me to the gallows!"
If her distress was intended to weaken him in his attitude of quiet, critical contemplation, it failed. Nevertheless he modified his tone somewhat.
"I am quite in the dark. I understand you have come to break off the engagement—that is not perhaps the shock you believe it—but I am curious to know what are your reasons."
Her tears stopped abruptly. She faced his glance.
"I said you would hate me," she said slowly.
"No, I do not think so."
"Yes, yes, you will hate me," she said breathlessly, "and you should. Oh, I'm not excusing myself. I hate myself. I despise myself. If you hated me you would only be right. Yes, you have every right."
"Are you engaged to any one else, Doris?" he said with a smile.
She sprang up indignantly.
"Oh, how could you say such a thing! Bojo!"
"If I have offended you I beg your pardon."
"You beg my pardon," she said, her lip trembling. She came and knelt at his side. "Bojo, look at me. You believe that I love you, don't you?—that you are the only thing, the only person in my life that I have ever loved, and that if I give you up it is because I must, because I can't help it, because—because I know myself so well that I know I haven't the strength to do what other women do—to be—poor! There you have it!"
"But you knew all this six months ago," he said, scenting some mystery. "Something else must have happened—what?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
He waited a moment.
"Well?"
She rose, listened a moment and glanced carefully about the room. Afterward he remembered this glance.
"You must give me your word of honor not to mention—not to breathe one word I say to you," she said in a lower voice.
"That is hardly necessary," he said quickly, on his dignity.
"No, no. This is not my secret. Your word of honor. I must have your word of honor."
"Very well," he said, carried away by his curiosity.
"Before the end of the year, in a few months even, Dad may lose every cent he has!"
"He told you?" he said incredulously. "Or is this some trick of your mother's?"
"No, no, it is no trick. Dad told us himself."
"Us? Whom?"
"Mother and me!"
"And Patsie?"
"No, Patsie is away."
"When did he tell you?"
"Just a week ago."
"But why?— That doesn't seem like him to tell you," said Bojo, frowning. "Perhaps you've exaggerated."
"No, no. He is in a bad way. He is caught," she said hurriedly. "Times have been hard, the market has gone down steadily—all summer—way, way down—and Dad is carrying enormous blocks of stock—must carry them or admit defeat—and you know Dad! I don't know exactly what's wrong. He didn't go into the matter; but he has enemies, tremendous enemies that are trying to put him out, and it's a question of credit. Oh, if you'd seen his face when he told us, you'd know just how serious it was!"
"Just what did he say?"
"He told us—I can't remember the words—that if times continued as they had been, he stood a chance of losing every cent he had, that he was in a fight for existence and that he couldn't tell how it would come out." She hesitated a moment and added: "He thought the situation so critical that we should know of it."
This last and the halting before saying it, suddenlygave him the light he had been seeking during all this interview.
"In other words, Doris," he said quickly, "frankly and honestly, since we are going to be honest now that we have come to the parting of the ways—your father let you understand so that you might know how critical the situation was and take your measures accordingly. That's it—isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"I hope at least that you haven't concealed anything from Boskirk," he said quietly.
"Why should I tell him?"—she started to burst out, and caught her breath, trapped.
"So you are already to be congratulated?" he said, looking at her with a smile.
"That isn't true," she said hastily. "You know and I know that Mr. Boskirk wants to marry me, that I can have him any day—"
"Don't," he said gravely. "You know there is an understanding—"
"Oh, an understanding—" she began.
"True," he interrupted. "At this moment, Doris, you know that Boskirk has proposed and you have accepted him. Why deny it? It is quite plain. You made up your mind that you would marry him the moment you learned you might be a pauper. Come, be honest—be square."
She went away from him and stood by the fireplace, her back to him.
"That is true—all of it," she said. A shudder passed over her. "I hate him!"
"What!" he cried, advancing toward her inamazement. "You hate him and yet you will marry him?"
"Yes. Because I can't bear to give up anything—because I am a weak, selfish woman."
In a flash he saw her as she would be—this woman who now stood before him twisting and turning in half-sincere outbursts, seeking to excuse or accuse herself before his eyes from the need of dramatic sensations.
"You will be," he said quietly. "So you are going to marry Boskirk?"
She nodded.
"Soon,verysoon?"
She winced under the note of sarcasm in his voice and turned breathlessly:
"Oh, Bojo—you despise me!"
"No—" he said indifferently. He held out his hand. "Well, we have said all we have to say, haven't we?"
Before he could prevent her or divine her intentions, she had flung herself on his shoulder, clinging to him despite his efforts to tear her from him.
"Please, no scenes," he said hastily. "Quite unnecessary."
She wished him to kiss her once—a last kiss; but he refused. Then she began to cry hysterically, vowing again and again, between her torrents of self-accusation, that no matter what the future brought she would never love any one else but him. It was not until she grew exhausted from the very storm of her emotion that he was able to loosen her arms and force her from him.
"Oh, you don't love me—you don't care!" shecried, when at last she felt herself alone and her arms empty.
"If that can be any consolation—if your grief is real—if you really do care for me," he said, "that is true. I do not love you, Doris, and I never have. That is why I do not hate you or despise you. I am sorry, awfully sorry. You could have been such an awfully good sort."
At this she caught her throat and, afraid of another paroxysm, he went out quickly.
Before the curb the touring-car was waiting. An idea came to him, remembering the glance Doris had sent about the room.
"Going back to-night, Carver?" he said to the chauffeur. "Much of a run?"
"Two hours and a half, sir."
"Mrs. Drake came down with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's the answer," he thought to himself, wondering how much she might have overheard. "Poor Doris."
He thought of her already as some one distantly removed, amazed to realize how quickly with the snapping of the artificial bond their true relationship had readjusted itself. He thought of her only with a great wonder, recognizing now all the possibilities which had lain in her for good, saddened, and shuddering in his young imagination at the price she had elected to pay.
He turned the corner with a last look at the turreted and gabled roof of the great Drake mansion, faint unreal shadows against the starlit sky, as though, in his newly acquired knowledge of the tremendouscatastrophe impending, it lay against the crowded silhouette of the city like a thing of dreams to vanish with the awakening reality.
Before the next month was over, Doris had married young Boskirk—a quiet country wedding whose simplicity excited much comment. Before another fortnight the market, which had been slowly receding before the rising wrath of a great financial panic, broke violently.
Two days after the breaking of his engagement to Doris, Bojo wrote to Patsie. His letter—the first he had written her—he was two days in composing, tearing up several drafts. He was afraid to say too much, and to discuss trivial matters seemed to him insincere. Finally he sent this letter:
Dear Drina:I suppose by now Doris has told you of what has happened. There are a great many things I want you to know about these trying months, that I've wanted you to know and have been hurt that you didn't know. Now that it's over I realize what a tragedy it would have been, and yet I would have gone on believing it was the right thing to do, trying to make myself believe in what I was doing. During all this time I have never forgotten certain things you said to me, your message the day of the panic, the look in your eyes that afternoon before I went in to see your father and—other memories. I want to see you. Where are you? When will you be back in New York?
Dear Drina:
I suppose by now Doris has told you of what has happened. There are a great many things I want you to know about these trying months, that I've wanted you to know and have been hurt that you didn't know. Now that it's over I realize what a tragedy it would have been, and yet I would have gone on believing it was the right thing to do, trying to make myself believe in what I was doing. During all this time I have never forgotten certain things you said to me, your message the day of the panic, the look in your eyes that afternoon before I went in to see your father and—other memories. I want to see you. Where are you? When will you be back in New York?
Faithfully yours,Bojo.
Having written this he carried it around in his pocket for another day before posting it. No sooner was it irrevocably beyond his hands than he had the feeling that he had committed an irretrievable blunder. The next moment it seemed to him that he had done the direct and courageous thing, that she would understand and be grateful to him for hisfrankness. Each morning he heard the rustle of the mail slipping under the door with a sudden cold foreboding, certain that her letter had come. Each evening, back from the grind of the factory, he came into the monastic corridors of Westover Court and turned the corner of the desk with a hot-and-cold hope that in the letter-box there, under the number 51, would be a letter waiting for him. When after a week no word had come, he began to make excuses. She was away on a visit, her mail had to be forwarded or more probably held for her return. But one day, happening to glance at the social column, in a report of the Berkshires he found her name as a contender in a tennis tournament. He wrote a second note: