Kathleen threw her hat and jacket into the sewing-chair and walked about, touching things to see how dusty they were. "I've been wondering if you didn't need me to come in and clean house for you, but it's not so bad as they report it. This is the first time I've called on you since you've been here alone. I've turned in from the walk more than once, but I've always run away again." She paused to warm her hands at the little stove. "I'm silly, you know; such queer things make me blue. And you still have Augusta's old forms. I don't think anything ever happened to her that amused her so much. And now, you know, she's quite sentimental about their being here. It's about Augusta that I came, Papa. Did you know that she had lost some of her savings in the Kinkoo Copper Company?"
"Augusta? Are you sure? What a shame!"
"Yes. She was sewing for me last week. I noticed that she seemed depressed and hadn't much appetite for lunch—which, you know, is unusual for Augusta. She was ashamed to tell any of us about it, because it seems she'd asked Louie's advice, and he told her not to invest in that company. But a lot of the people in her church were putting money into it, and of course that made it seem all right to her. She lost five hundred dollars, a fortune for her, and Scott says she'll never get a cent of it back."
"Five hundred dollars," murmured St. Peter. "Let me see, at three dollars a day that means one hundred and sixty-six days. Now what can we do about it?"
"Of course we must do something. I knew you'd feel that way, Father."
"Certainly. Among us, we must cover it. I'll speak to Rosamond to-night."
"You needn't, dear." Kathleen tossed her head. "I have been to her. She refuses."
"Refuses? She can't refuse, my dear. I'll have a word to say." The firmness of his tone, and the quick rush of claret colour under his skin, were a gratification to his daughter.
"She says that Louie took the trouble to speak to his banker and to several copper men before he advised Augusta; and that if she doesn't learn her lesson this time, she will do the same thing over again. Rosamond said they would do something for Augusta later, but she didn't say what."
"Leave Rosamond to me. I'll convince her."
"Even if you can do anything with her, she's determined to make Augusta admit her folly, and it can't be done that way. Augusta is terribly proud. When I told her customers ought to make it up to her, she was very haughty and said she wasn't that kind of a sewing-woman; that she gave her ladies good measure for their money. Scott thought we could buy stock in some good company and tell her we had used our influence and got an exchange, but that she must keep quiet about it. We could manage some such little fib, she knows so little about business. I know I can get the Dudleys and the Browns to help. We needn't go to the Marselluses."
"Wait a few days. It's a disgrace to us as a family not to make it up ourselves. On her own account, we oughtn't to let Rosamond out. She's altogether too blind to responsibilities of that kind. In a world full of blunderers, why should Augusta have to pay scrupulously for her mistakes? It's very petty of Rosie, really!"
Kathleen started to speak, stopped and turned away. "Scott will give a hundred dollars," she said a moment later.
"That's very generous of him. I'll give another, and Rosie shall make up the rest. If she doesn't, I'll speak to Louie. He's an absolutely generous chap. I've never known him to refuse to give either time or money."
Kathleen's eyes suddenly brightened. "Why, Daddy, you have Tom's Mexican blanket! I never knew he gave it to you. I've often wondered what became of it." She picked up from the foot of the box-couch a purple blanket, faded in streaks to amethyst, with a pale yellow stripe at either end.
"Oh, yes, I often get chilly when I lie down, especially if I turn the stove out, which your mother says I ought always to do. Nothing could part me from that blanket."
"He wouldn't have given it to anybody but you. It was like his skin. Do you remember how horsey it smelled when he first brought it over and showed it to us?"
"Just like a livery stable! It had been strapped behind the saddle on so many sweating cow-ponies. In damp weather that smell is still perceptible."
Kathleen stroked it thoughtfully. "Roddy brought it up from Old Mexico, you know. He gave it to Tom that winter he had pneumonia. Tom ought to have taken it to France with him. He used to say that Rodney Blake might turn up in the Foreign Legion. If he had taken this, it might have been like the wooden cups that were always revealingAmisandAmileto each other."
St. Peter smiled and patted her hand on the blanket. "Do you know, Kitty, I sometimes think I ought to go out and look for Blake myself. He's on my conscience. If that country down there weren't so everlastingly big——"
"Oh, Father! That was my romantic dream when I was little, finding Roddy! I used to think about it for hours when I was supposed to be taking my nap. I used to swim rivers and climb mountains and wander about with Navajos, and rescue Roddy at the most critical moments, when he was being stabbed in the back, or drugged in a gambling-house, and bring him back to Tom. You know Tom told us about him long before he ever told you."
"You children used to live in his stories. You cared more about them than about all your adventure books."
"I still do," said Kathleen, rising. "Now that Rosamond has Outland, I consider Tom's mesa entirely my own."
St. Peter put down the cigarette he had just lighted with anticipation. "Can't you stay awhile, Kitty? I almost never see anyone who remembers that side of Tom. It was nice, all those years when he was in and out of the house like an older brother. Always very different from the other college boys, wasn't he? Always had something in his voice, in his eyes . . . One seemed to catch glimpses of an unusual background behind his shoulders when he came into the room."
Kathleen smiled wanly. "Yes, and now he's all turned out chemicals and dollars and cents, hasn't he? But not for you and me! Our Tom is much nicer than theirs." She put on her jacket and went out of the study and quickly down the stairs. Her father, on the landing, looked after her until she disappeared. When she was gone he still stood there, motionless, as if he were listening intently, or trying to fasten upon some fugitive idea.
St. Peter was breakfasting at six-thirty, alone, reading last night's letters while he waited for the coffee to percolate. It had been long since he had had an eight o'clock class, but this year the schedule committee had slyly put him down for one. "He can afford to take a taxi over now," the Dean remarked.
After breakfast he went upstairs and into his wife's room. "I have a rendezvous with a lady," he said, tossing an envelope upon her counterpane. She read a note from Mrs. Crane, the least attractive of the faculty ladies, requesting an interview with the Professor at his earliest convenience: as she wished to see him quite alone, might she come to his study in the old house, where she understood he still worked?
"Poor Godfrey!" murmured his wife.
"One ought not to joke about it——" St. Peter went into his own room to get a handkerchief and came back, taking up his suspended sentence. "I'm afraid it means poor Crane is coming up for another operation. Or, worse still, that the surgeons tell her another would be useless. It's likeThe Pit and the Pendulum.I feel as if the poor fellow were strapped down on a revolving disk that comes around under the knife just so often."
Mrs. St. Peter looked judicially at the letter, then at her husband's back. She didn't believe that surgery would be the subject of discussion when they met. Mrs. Crane had been behaving very strangely of late.
Doctor Crane had married a girl whom no other man ever thought of courting, a girl of whom people always said: "Oh, she's sogood!" chiefly because she was so homely. They had three very plain daughters, and only Crane's salary to live upon. Doctors and surgeons kept them poor enough.
St. Peter kissed his wife and went forth quite unconscious of what was going on in her mind. During the morning he telephoned Mrs. Crane, and arranged a meeting with her at five o'clock. As the bell in the old house didn't work now, he waited downstairs on the front porch, to receive his visitor and conduct her up to his study. It was raining drearily, and Mrs. Crane arrived in a rubber coat, and a knitted sport hat belonging to one of her daughters. St. Peter took her wet umbrella and led her up the two flights of stairs.
"I'm not very well appointed to receive ladies, Mrs. Crane. This was the sewing-room, you know. There's Augusta's chair, which she insisted was comfortable."
"Thank you." Mrs. Crane sat down, took off her gloves, and tucked wisps of damp hair up under her crocheted hat. Her bleak, plain face wore an expression of grievance.
"I've come without my husband's knowledge, Doctor St. Peter, to ask you what you think can be done about our rights in the Outland patent. You know how my husband's health has crippled us financially, and we never know when his trouble may come on worse again. Myself, I've never doubted that you would see it is only right to share with us."
St. Peter looked at her in amazement. "But, my dear Mrs. Crane, how can I share with you what I haven't got? Tom willed his estate and royalties in a perfectly regular way. The fact that he named my daughter as his sole beneficiary doesn't affect me, any more than if he had named some relative of his own. I tell you frankly, I have never received one dollar from the Outland patent."
"It's all the same if it goes to your family, Doctor St. Peter. My husband must be considered in this matter. He spent days and nights working with Outland. Tom never could have worked his theory out without Robert's help. He said so, more than once, in my presence and in the presence of others."
"Oh, I believe that, Mrs. Crane. But the difficulty is that Tom didn't make any recognition of that assistance in his will."
Mrs. Crane had set her head and advanced her long chin with meek determination. "Well, this is how it was, Professor. Mr. Marsellus came here a stranger, to put in the Edison power plant, just at the time the city was stirred up about Outland's being killed at the front. Everybody was wanting to do something in recognition of the young man. You brought Mr. Marsellus to our house and introduced him. After that he came alone, again and again, and he got round my husband. Robert thought he was disinterested, and was only taking a scientific interest, and he told him a great deal about what he and Outland had been working on. Then Rosamond's lawyers came for the papers. Tom Outland had no laboratory of his own. He was allowed the use of a room in the physics building, at my husband's request. He wanted to be there, because he constantly needed Robert's help. The first thing we knew, your daughter's engagement to Marsellus was announced, and then we heard that all Outland's papers had been given over to him."
Here St. Peter anticipated her. "But, Mrs. Crane, your husband couldn't, and wouldn't, have kept Tom's papers. They had to be given over to his executor, who was my daughter's attorney."
"Well, I could have kept them, if he couldn't!"—Mrs. Crane threw up her head as if to show that the worm had turned at last—"kept them until justice was done us, and some recognition had been made of my husband's part in all that research work. If he had taken the papers to court then, with all the evidence we have, we could easily have got an equity. But Mr. Marsellus is very smooth. He flattered Robert and got everything there was."
"But he didn't get anything from your husband. Outland's papers and apparatus were delivered to his executor, as was inevitable."
"That was a poor subterfuge," said Mrs. Crane, with deep meaning. "You know how unworldly Robert is, and as an old friend you might have warned us."
"Of what, Mrs. Crane?"
"Why, that Marsellus saw there was a fortune in the gas my husband and his pupil had made, and we could have asked for our equity before we gave your son-in-law a free hand with everything."
St. Peter felt very unhappy. He began walking up and down the little room. "Heaven knows I'd like to see Crane get something out of it, but how? How? I've thought a great deal about this matter, and I've blamed Tom for making that kind of will. I don't think it occurred to the boy that the will would ever be probated. He expected to come back from the war and develop the thing himself. I doubt whether Robert, with all his superior knowledge, would have known the twists and turns by which the patent could be commercialized. It took a great deal of work and a special kind of ability to do that."
"A salesman's ability!" Mrs. Crane was becoming nasty.
"If you like; but certainly Robert would have been no man to convince manufacturers and machinists, any more than I would. A great deal of money was put into it, too, before any came back; every cent Marsellus had, and all he could borrow. He took heavy chances. Crane and I together could never have raised a hundredth part of the capital that was necessary to get the thing started. Without capital to make it go, Tom's idea was merely a formula written out on paper. It had lain for two years in your husband's laboratory, and would have lain there for years more before he or I would have done anything about it."
Mrs. Crane's dreary face took on more animation than he had supposed it capable of. "It had lain there because it belonged there, and was made there! My husband was done out of it by an adventurer, and his friendship for you tied his hands. I must say you've shown very little consideration for him. You might have warned us never to let those papers go. You see Robert getting weaker all the time and having those terrible operations, and our girls going shabby and teaching in the ward schools, and Rosamond riding about in a limousine and building country houses,—and you do nothing about it. You take your honours—you've deserved them, we never forget that—and move into your new house, and you don't remember what it is to be in straitened circumstances."
St. Peter drew his chair nearer to Mrs. Crane, and addressed her patiently. "Mrs. Crane, if you had any legal rights in the patent, I'd defend them against Rosamond as soon as against anyone else. I think she ought to recognize Dr. Crane's long friendship and helpfulness to Tom in some way. I don't see just how it can be done, but I feel it should be. And if you wish, I'll tell Rosamond how I feel. Why don't you put this matter before her?"
"I don't care to ask anything of Mrs. Marsellus. I wrote her some time ago, and she replied to me through her lawyer, saying that all claims against the Outland patent would be considered in due order. It's not worthy of a man in Robert's position to accept hush money from the Marselluses. We want justice, and my brother is confident the court will give it to us."
"Well, I suppose Bright knows more about what the courts will do than I. But if you've decided to go to law about it, why did you come to me?"
"There are some things the law don't cover," said Mrs. Crane mysteriously, as she rose and put on her gloves. "I wanted you to know how we feel about it."
St. Peter followed her downstairs and put up her umbrella for her, and then went back to his study to think it over. His friendship with Crane had been a strange one. Out in the world they would almost certainly have kept clear of each other; but in the university they had fought together in a common cause. Both, with all their might, had resisted the new commercialism, the aim to "show results" that was undermining and vulgarizing education. The State Legislature and the board of regents seemed determined to make a trade school of the university. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts were allowed credits for commercial studies; courses in book-keeping, experimental farming, domestic science, dress-making, and what not. Every year the regents tried to diminish the number of credits required in science and the humanities. The liberal appropriations, the promotions and increases in salary, all went to the professors who worked with the regents to abolish the purely cultural studies. Out of a faculty of sixty, there were perhaps twenty men who made any serious stand for scholarship, and Robert Crane was one of the staunchest. He had lost the Deanship of the College of Science because of his uncompromising opposition to the degrading influence of politicians in university affairs. The honour went, instead, to a much younger man, head of the department of chemistry, who was willing "to give the taxpayers what they wanted."
The struggle to preserve the dignity of the university, and their own, had brought St. Peter and Dr. Crane much together. They were, moreover, the only two men on the faculty who were doing research work of an uncommercial nature, and they occasionally dropped in on one another to exchange ideas. But that was as far as it went. St. Peter couldn't ask Crane to dinner; the presence of a bottle of claret on the table would have made him uncomfortable. Dr. Crane had all the prejudices of the Baptist community in which he grew up. He carried them with him when he went to study at a German university, and brought them back. But Crane knew that none of his colleagues followed his work so closely, and rejoiced at his little triumphs so heartily, as St. Peter.
St. Peter couldn't help admiring the man's courage; poor, ill, overworked, held by his conscience to a generous discharge of his duties as a teacher, he was all the while carrying on these tedious and delicate experiments that had to do with determining the extent of space. Fortunately, Crane seemed to have no social needs or impulses. He never went anywhere, except, once or twice a year, to a dinner at the President's house. Music disturbed him too much, dancing shocked him—he couldn't see why it was permitted among the students. Once, after Mrs. St. Peter had sat next him at the President's dinner-table, she said to her husband: "The man is too dreary! All evening his heavy underwear kept coming down below his cuffs, and he kept poking it bade with his fore-finger. I believe he thinks it's wicked to live with even so plain a woman as Mrs. Crane."
After Tom Outland graduated from the university, he and Dr. Crane worked side by side in the Physics building for several years. The older man had been of great assistance to the younger, without doubt. Though that kind of help, the result of criticism and suggestion, is not easily reckoned in percentages, still St. Peter thought Crane ought to get something out of the patent. He resolved to see Louie about it. But first he had better talk with Crane himself, and try to dissuade him from going to law. His brother-in-law, Homer Bright, would be tempted by the publicity which an action involving the Outland patent would certainly bring him. But he would lose the case, and Crane would get nothing. Whereas Louie, if he were properly approached, would be generous.
St. Peter looked at his watch. He would go home now, and after dinner he would walk over to the Physics building, where his colleague worked every night. He never went to see Crane at his house if he could help it. He lived in the most depressing and unnecessary ugliness.
At dinner Lillian asked him no questions about his interview with Mrs. Crane, and he volunteered no information. She was not surprised, however, when he said he would not stop for a cigar, as he was going over to the Physics laboratory.
He walked through the park, past the old house and across the north end of the campus, to a building that stood off by itself in a grove of pine-trees. It was constructed of red brick, after an English model. The architect had had a good idea, and he very nearly succeeded in making a good thing, something like the old Smithsonian building in Washington. But after it was begun, the State Legislature had defeated him by grinding down the contractor to cheap execution, and had spoiled everything, outside and in. Ever since it was finished, plumbers and masons and carpenters had been kept busy patching and repairing it. Crane and St. Peter, both young men then, had wasted weeks of time with the contractors, and had finally gone before the Legislative committee in person to plead for the integrity of that building. But nothing came of all their pains. It was one of many lost causes.
St. Peter entered the building and went upstairs to a small room at the end of a chain of laboratories. After knocking, he heard the familiar shuffle of Crane's carpet slippers, and the door opened.
Crane was wearing a grey cotton coat, shrunk to a rag by washing, though he wasn't working with fluids or batteries to-night, but at a roll-top desk littered with papers. The room was like any study behind a lecture room; dusty books, dusty files, but no apparatus—except a spirit-lamp and a little saucepan in which the physicist heated water for his cocoa at regular intervals. He was working by the glare of an unshaded electric bulb of high power—the man seemed to have no feeling for comfort of any kind. He asked his visitor to sit down, and to excuse him for a moment while he copied some entries into a note-book.
St. Peter watched him scribbling with his fountain pen. The hands that were so deft in delicate manipulations were white and soft-looking; the fingers long and loosely hung, stained with chemicals, and blunted at the tips like a violinist's. His head was square, and the lower part of his face was covered by a reddish, matted beard. His pale eyes and fawn-coloured eyebrows were outbalanced by his mouth, his most conspicuous feature. One always remembered about Crane that unexpected, startling red mouth in a setting of kinky beard. The lips had no modelling, they were as thick at the corners as in the middle, and he spoke through them rather than with them. He seemed painfully conscious of them.
St. Peter saw no use in beating about the bush. As soon as Crane put down his pen, he remarked that Mrs. Crane had been to see him that afternoon. His colleague flushed, took up a large celluloid paper-knife, and began shutting and unshutting his hands about the blade.
"I want to know exactly how you feel about this, and what the facts are," St. Peter began. "We've never discussed it before, and there may be things I know nothing about. Did Tom ever say that he meant you to have a share in his profits, if there were any?"
"No, not exactly. Not exactly that." Dr. Crane moved his shoulders about in his tight coat and looked embarrassed and unhappy. "More than once he said, in a general way, that he hoped it would go, on my account as well as on his own, and that we would use the income for further experiments."
"Did he talk much about the possible commercial value of the gas while he was trying to make it?"
"Not much. No, very seldom. Perhaps not more than half a dozen times in the three years he was working in my laboratory. But whenever he did, he spoke as if there would be something in it for both of us if our gas became remunerative."
"Just how much was it 'our gas,' Crane?"
"Strictly speaking, of course, it wasn't. The idea was Outland's. He benefited by my criticism, and I often helped him with his experiments. He never acquired a nice laboratory technic. He would fail repeatedly in some perfectly sound experiment because of careless procedure."
"Do you think he would have arrived at his results without your help?"
Dr. Crane was clenching the paper-knife with both hands. "That I cannot say. He was impatient. He might have got discouraged and turned to something else. He would have been much slower in getting his results, at any rate. His conception was right, but very delicate manipulation was necessary, and he was a careless experimentor."
St. Peter felt that this was becoming nothing less than cross-examination. He tried to change the tone of it.
"I want to see you get recognition and compensation for whatever part you had in his experiments, if there's any way to get it. But you've been neglectful, Crane. You haven't taken the proper steps. Why in the world didn't you have some understanding with Tom when he was getting his patent? You knew all about it."
"It didn't occur to me then. We'd finished the experiments, and I put them out of my mind. I was trying to concentrate on my own work. His results weren't as interesting scientifically as I'd expected them to be."
"While his manuscripts and formulae were lying here those two years, did you ever make the gas, or give any study to its behaviour?"
"No, of course not. It's off my own line, and didn't interest me."
"Then it's only since this patent has begun to make money that it does interest you?"
Dr. Crane twisted his shoulders. "Yes. It's the money."
"Heaven knows I'd like to see you get some of it. But why did you put it off so long? Why didn't you make some claim when you delivered the papers to his executor, since you hadn't done so before? Why didn't you bring the matter up to me then, and let me make a claim against the estate for you?"
Dr. Crane could endure his chair no longer. He began to walk softly about in his slippers, looking at nothing, but, as he talked, picking up objects here and there,—drawing-tools, his cocoa-cup, a china cream-pitcher, turning them round and carefully putting them down again, just as he often absently handled pieces of apparatus when he was lecturing.
"I know," he said, "appearances are against me. But you must understand my negligence. You know how little opportunity a man has to carry on his own line of investigation here. You know how much time I give to any of my students who are doing honest work. Outland was, of course, the most brilliant pupil I ever had, and I gave him time and thought without stint. Gladly, of course. If he were reaping the rewards of his discovery himself, I'd have nothing to say—though I've not the least doubt he would compensate me liberally. But it does not seem right that a stranger should profit, and not those who helped him. You, of course, do profit—indirectly, if not directly. You cannot shut your eyes to the fact that this money, coming into your family, has strengthened your credit and your general security. That's as it should be. But your claim was less definite than mine. I spent time and strength I could ill afford to spare on the very series of experiments that led to this result. Marsellus gets the benefit of my work as well as of Outland's. I have certainly been ill-used—and, as you say, it's difficult to get recompense when I ask for it so late. It's not to my discredit, certainly, that I didn't take measures to protect my interests. I never thought of my student's work in terms of money. There were others who did, and I was not considered," he concluded bitterly.
"Why don't you put in a claim to Marsellus, for your time and expert advice? I think he'd honour it. He is going to live here. He probably doesn't wish to be more unpopular than a suddenly prosperous man is bound to be, and you have many friends. I believe I can convince him that it would be poor policy to disregard any reasonable demand."
"I had thought of that. But my wife's brother advises a different course."
"Ah, yes. Mrs. Crane said something of that sort. Well, Crane, if you're going to law about it, I hope you'll consult a sound lawyer, and you know as well as I that Homer Bright is not one."
Dr. Crane coloured and bridled. "I'm sure you are disinterested, St. Peter, but, frankly, I think your judgment has been warped by events. You don't realize how clear the matter is to unprejudiced minds. Though I'm such an unpractical man, I have evidence to rest my claims upon."
"The more the better, if you are going to depend on such a windbag as Bright. If you go to law, I'd like to see you win your case."
St. Peter said good-night, went down the stairs, and out through the dark pine-trees. Evidence, Crane said; probably letters Tom had written him during the winter he was working at Johns Hopkins. Well, there was nothing to be done, unless he could get old Dr. Hutchins to persuade Crane to employ an intelligent lawyer. Homer Bright's rhetoric might influence a jury in a rape or bigamy case, but it would antagonize a judge in an equity court.
The Professor took a turn in the park before going home. The interview had depressed him, and he was afraid he might be wakeful. He had never seen his colleague in such an unbecoming light before. Crane was narrow, but he was straight; a man you could count on in the shifty game of college politics. He had never been out to get anything for himself. St. Peter would have said that nothing about the vulgar success of Outland's idea could possibly matter to Crane, beyond gratifying his pride as a teacher and friend.
The park was deserted. The arc-lights were turned off. The leafless trees stood quite motionless in the light of the clear stars. The world was sad to St. Peter as he looked about him; the lake-shore country flat and heavy, Hamilton small and tight and airless. The university, his new house, his old house, everything around him, seemed insupportable, as the boat on which he is imprisoned seems to a seasick man. Yes, it was possible that the little world, on its voyage among all the stars, might become like that; a boat on which one could travel no longer, from which one could no longer look up and confront those bright rings or revolution.
He brought himself back with a jerk. Ah, yes, Crane; that was the trouble. If Outland were here to-night, he might say with Mark Antony,My fortunes have corrupted honest men.
At the end of the semester, St. Peter went to Chicago with Rosamond to help her buy things for her country house. He had very much wanted to stay at home and rest—the university work seemed to take it out of him that winter more than ever before; but Rosamond had set her mind on his going, and Mrs. St. Peter told him he couldn't refuse. A Chicago merchant had brought over a lot of old Spanish furniture, and on this nobody's judgment would be better than St. Peter's. He was supposed to know a good deal about rugs, too. When his wife said a thing must be done, the Professor usually did it, from long-established habit. Her instincts about what one owed to other people were better than his.
Louie accompanied them to Chicago, where he was to join his brother, the one who was in the silk trade in China, and go on to New York with him for a family reunion. St. Peter was amused, and pleased, to see that Louie sincerely hated to leave them—with very little encouragement he would have sent his brother on alone and remained in Chicago with his wife and father-in-law. They all lunched together, after which the Professor and Rosamond took the Marsellus brothers to the LaSalle Street station. When Louie had again and again kissed his hand to them from the rear platform of the Twentieth Century observation car, and was rolled away in the very act of shouting something to his wife, St. Peter, who had so often complained that there was too much Louie in his life, now felt a sudden drop, a distinct sense of loss.
He took Rosamond's arm, and they turned away from the shining rails. "We must be diligent, Rosie. He expects wonders of us."
Scott McGregor got on the Blue Bird Express one afternoon, returning from a business trip for his paper. On entering the smoking-car, he came upon his father-in-law lying back in a leather chair, his clothes covered with dust, his eyes closed, a dead cigar hanging between the relaxed lingers of his dark, muscular hand. It gave Scott a start; he thought the Professor didn't look well.
"Hello, Doctor! What are you doing here? Oh, yes! the shopping expedition. Where's Rosamond?"
"In Chicago. At the Blackstone."
"Outlasted you, did she?"
"That's it." The Professor smiled apologetically, as if he were ashamed to admit it.
Scott sat down beside him and tried to interest him in one subject after another, without success. It occurred to him that he had never before seen the Professor when he seemed absolutely flattened out and listless. That was a bad sign; he was glad they were only half an hour from Hamilton. "The old chap needs rest," he reflected. "Rosamond's run him to death in Chicago. He oughtn't to be used as a courier, anyhow! I'm going to tell Kitty that we must look out for her father a little. The Marselluses have no mercy, and Lillian has always taken it for granted that he was as strong as three men."
That evening Mrs. St. Peter was standing by the French windows in the drawing-room, watching somewhat anxiously for her husband. The Chicago train was usually punctual, and surely he would have taken a cab from the station, for it was a raw February night with a freezing wind blowing off the lake. St. Peter arrived on foot, however. As he came through the gate, she could see by his walk and the set of his shoulders that he was very tired. She hurried to open the front door, and asked him why he hadn't come up in a taxi.
"Didn't think of it, really. I'm a creature of habit, and that's one of the things I never used to do."
"And in your lightest overcoat! I thought you only wore this one because you were going to buy a new fur coat in Chicago."
"Well, I didn't," he said rather shortly. "Let's omit the verb 'to buy' in all forms for a time. Keep dinner back a little, will you, Lillian? I want to take a warm bath and dress. I did get rather chilled coming up."
Mrs. St. Peter went to the kitchen, and, after a discreet interval, followed her husband upstairs and into his room.
"I know you're tired, but tell me one thing: did you find the painted Spanish bedroom set?"
"Oh, dear, yes! Several of them."
"And were they pretty?"
"Very. At least, I think I'd have found them so if I'd come upon them without so many other things. Too much is certainly worse than too little—of anything. It turned out to be rather an orgy of acquisition."
"Rosamond lost her head?"
"Oh, no! Perfectly cool. I should say she had a faultless purchasing manner. Wonder where a girl who grew up in that old house of ours ever got it. She was like Napoleon looting the Italian palaces."
"Don't be harsh. You had a nice little vacation, at any rate."
"A very expensive one, for a poor professor. And not much rest."
A look of sharp anxiety came into Mrs. St. Peter's face. "You mean," she breathed in a hushed voice, "that she let you——"
He cut in sharply. "I mean that I paid my way, as I hope always to be able to do. Any suggestion to the contrary might have been very graceful, but it would have been rejected. I am quite ready to permit myself a little extravagance to be of service to the women of my family. Any other arrangement is humiliating."
"Then that was why you didn't get your fur coat."
"That may have been one reason. I was not much in the humour for it."
Mrs. St. Peter went swiftly downstairs to make him a cocktail. She sensed an unusual weariness in him, and felt, as it were, the bitter taste on his tongue. A man, she knew, could get from his daughter a peculiar kind of hurt—one of the cruellest that flesh is heir to. Her heart ached for Godfrey.
When the Professor had been warmed and comforted by a good dinner, he lit a cigar and sat down before the hearth to read. After a while his wife saw that the book had slid to his knee, and he was looking into the fire. Studying his dark profile, she noticed that the corners of his funny eyebrows rose, as if he were amused by something.
"What are you thinking about, Godfrey?" she said presently. "Just then you were smiling—quite agreeably!"
"I was thinking," he answered absently, "about Euripides; how, when he was an old man, he went and lived in a cave by the sea, and it was thought queer, at the time. It seems that houses had become insupportable to him. I wonder whether it was because he had observed women so closely all his life."
The month of March was the dreariest and bleakest of the year in Hamilton, and Louie strove to brighten it by opening a discussion of plans for the summer. He had been hinting for some time that he had a very attractive project up his sleeve, and though he had not succeeded in keeping it from Mrs. St. Peter, he said nothing to the Professor until one night when they were dining at the Marselluses'. All through dinner Louie kept reminding them of the specialties of this and that Paris restaurant, so that St. Peter was not altogether unprepared.
As they left the dining-room, Louie burst out with it. He and Rosamond were to take Doctor and Mrs. St. Peter to France for the summer. Louie had decided upon the dates, the boat, the itinerary; he was intoxicated with the pleasure of planning.
"Understand," he said, "it is to be our excursion, from Hamilton back to Hamilton. We'll travel in the most ample comfort, but not in magnificence. We'll go down to Biarritz for a little fashionable life, and stop at Marseilles to see your foster-brother, Charles Thierault. The rest of the summer we'll lead a scholarly life in Paris. I have my own reasons for wishing you to go along, Professor. The pleasure of your company would be quite enough, but I have also other reasons. I want to see the intellectual side of Paris, and to meet some of the savants and men of letters whom you know. What a shame Gaston Paris is not living! We could very nicely make up a little party at Lapérouse for him. But there are others."
Mrs. St. Peter developed the argument. "Yes, Louie, you and Godfrey can lunch with the scholars while Rosamond and I are shopping."
Marsellus looked alarmed. "Not at all, Dearest! It's to be understood that I always shop with you. I adore the shops in Paris. Besides, we shall want you with us when we lunch with celebrities. When was a savant, and a Frenchman, not eager for the company of two charming ladies atdéjeuner?And you may have too much of the society of yoursposi; very nice for you to have variety. You must keep a little engagement book:Lundi, déjeuner, M. Emile Faguet. Mercredi, diner, M. Anatole France; and so on."
St. Peter chuckled. "I'm afraid you exaggerate the circumference of my social circle, Louie. I haven't the pleasure of knowing Anatole France."
"No matter; we can have M. Paul Bourget for Wednesday."
"You can help us, too, about finding things for the house, Papa," said Rosamond. "We expect to pick up a good many things. The Thieraults ought to know good shops down in the South, where prices have not gone up."
"I'm afraid the antiquaries are centralized in Paris. I never saw anything very interesting in Lyons or the Midi. However, they may exist."
"Charles Thierault is still interested in a shipping-line that runs to the City of Mexico, isn't he? He could perfectly well send our purchases from Marseilles to the City of Mexico for us. They would go in without duty, and Louie thinks he can get them across the border as household goods."
"That sounds practicable, Rosie. It might be managed."
Marsellus laughed and patted his wife's hand. "Oh-ho,cher Papa, you haven't begun to find how practical we can be!"
"Well, Louie, it's a tempting idea, and I'll think it over. I'll see whether I can arrange my work." St. Peter knew at that moment that he would never be one of this light-hearted expedition, and he hated himself for the ungracious drawing-back that he felt in the region of his diaphragm.
The family discussed their summer plans all evening. Louie wanted to write at once for rooms at the Meurice, but Mrs. St. Peter ruled it out as too expensive.
That night, after he was in bed, St. Peter tried in vain to justify himself in his inevitable refusal. He liked Paris, and he liked Louie. But one couldn't do one's own things in another person's way; selfish or not, that was the truth. Besides, he would not be needed. He could trust Louie to take every care of Lillian, and nobody could please her more than her son-in-law.Beaux-fils, apparently, were meant by Providence to take the husband's place when husbands had ceased to be lovers. Marsellus never forgot one of the hundred foolish little attentions that Lillian loved. Best of all, he admired her extravagantly, her distinction was priceless to him. Many people admired her, but Louie more than most. That worldliness, that willingness to get the most out of occasions and people, which had developed so strongly in Lillian in the last few years, seemed to Louie as natural and proper as it seemed unnatural to Godfrey. It was an element that had always been in Lillian, and as long as it resulted in mere fastidiousness, was not a means to an end, St. Peter had liked it, too. He knew it was due to this worldliness, even more than to the fact that his wife had a little money of her own, that she and his daughters had never been drab and a little pathetic, like some of the faculty women. They hadn't much, but they were never absurd. They never made shabby compromises. If they couldn't get the right thing, they went without. Usually they had the right thing, and it got paid for, somehow. He couldn't say they were extravagant; the old house had been funny and bare enough, but there were no ugly things in it.
Since Rosamond's marriage to Marsellus, both she and her mother had changed bewilderingly in some respects—changed and hardened. But Louie, who had done the damage, had not damaged himself. It was to him that one appealed,—for Augusta, for Professor Crane, for the bruised feelings of people less fortunate. It was less because of Louie than for any other reason that he would refuse this princely invitation.
He could get out of it without hurting anybody—though he knew Louie would be sorry. He could simply insist that he must work, and that he couldn't work away from his old study. There were some advantages about being a writer of histories. The desk was a shelter one could hide behind, it was a hole one could creep into.
When St. Peter told his family of his decision, Louie was disappointed; but he was respectful, and readily conceded that the Professor's first duty was to his work. Rosamond was incredulous and piqued; she didn't see how he could be so ungenerous as to spoil an arrangement which would give pleasure to everyone concerned. His wife looked at him with thoughtful disbelief.
When they were alone together, she approached the matter more directly than was her wont nowadays.
"Godfrey," she said slowly and sadly, "I wonder what it is that makes you draw away from your family. Or who it is."
"My dear, are you going to be jealous?"
"I wish I were going to be. I'd much rather see you foolish about some woman than becoming lonely and inhuman."
"Well, the habit of living with ideas grows on one, I suppose, just as inevitably as the more cheerful habit of living with various ladies. There's something to be said for both."
"I think your ideas were best when you were your most human self."
St. Peter sighed. "I can't contradict you there. But I must go on as I can. It is not always May."
"You are not old enough for the pose you take. That's what puzzles me. For so many years you never seemed to grow at all older, though I did. Two years ago you were an impetuous young man. Now you save yourself in everything. You're naturally warm and affectionate; all at once you begin shutting yourself away from everybody. I don't think you'll be happier for it." Up to this point she had been lecturing him. Now she suddenly crossed the room and sat down on the arm of his chair, looking into his face and twisting up the ends of his military eyebrows with her thumb and middle finger. "Why is it, Godfrey? I can't see any change in your face, though I watch you so closely. It's in your mind, in your mood. Something has come over you. Is it merely that you know too much, I wonder? Too much to be happy? You were always the wisest person in the world. What is it, can't you tell me?"
"I can't altogether tell myself, Lillian. It's not wholly a matter of the calendar. It's the feeling that I've put a great deal behind me, where I can't go back to it again—and I don't really wish to go back. The way would be too long and too fatiguing. Perhaps, for a home-staying man, I've lived pretty hard. I wasn't willing to slight anything—you, or my desk, or my students. And now I seem to be tremendously tired. One pays, coming or going. A man has got only just so much in him; when it's gone he slumps. Even the first Napoleon did." They both laughed. That was an old joke—the Professor's darkest secret. At the font he had been christened Napoleon Godfrey St. Peter. There had always been a Napoleon in the family, since a remote grandfather got his discharge from the Grande Armée. Godfrey had abbreviated his name in Kansas, and even his daughters didn't know what it had been originally.
"I think, you know," he told his wife as he rose to go to bed, "that I'll get my second wind. But for the present I don't want anything very stimulating. Paris is too beautiful, and too full of memories."
One Saturday morning in the spring, when the Professor was at work in the old house, he heard energetic footsteps running up the uncarpeted stairway. Louie's voice called:
"Cher Papa, shall I disturb you too much?"
St. Peter rose and opened to him. Louie was wearing his golf stockings, and a purple jacket with a fur collar.
"No, I'm not going golfing. I changed my mind, but didn't have time to change my clothes. I want you to take a run out along the lake-shore with us. Rosie is going to lunch with some friends at the Country Club. We'll have a drive with her, and then drop her there. It's a glorious day." Louie's keen, interested eye ran about the shabby little room. He chuckled. "The old bear, he just likes his old den, doesn't he? I can readily understand. Your children were born here. Not your daughters—your sons, your splendid Spanish-adventurer sons! I'm proud to be related to them, even by marriage. And your blanket, surely that's a Spanish touch!" Louie pounced upon the purple blanket, threw it across his chest, and, moving aside the wire lady, studied himself in Augusta's glass. "And a very proper dressing-gown it would make for Louie, wouldn't it?"
"It was Outland's—a precious possession. His lost chum brought it up from Mexico."
"Was it Outland's, indeed?" Louie stroked it and regarded it in the glass with increased admiration. "I can never forgive destiny that I hadn't the chance to know that splendid fellow."
The Professor's eyebrows rose in puzzled interrogation. "It might have been awkward—about Rosie, you know."
"I never think of him as a rival," said Louie, throwing back the blanket with a wide gesture. "I think of him as a brother, an adored and gifted brother."
Half an hour later they were spinning along through the country, just coming green, Rosamond and her father on the back seat, Louie facing them. It struck the Professor that Louie had something on his mind; his restless bright eyes watched his wife narrowly, as if to seize an opportune moment.
"You know, Doctor," he said presently, "we've decided to give up our house before we go abroad, and cut off the rent. We'll move the books and pictures up to Outland (and our wedding presents, of course), and the silver we'll put in the bank. There won't be much of our present furniture that we'll need. I wonder if you could use any of it? And it has just occurred to me, Rosie," here he leaned forward and tapped her knee, "that we might ask Scott and Kathleen to come round and select anything they like. No use bothering to sell it, we'd get so little."
Rosamond looked at him in astonishment. It was very evident they had not discussed anything of this sort before. "Don't be foolish, Louie," she said quietly. "They wouldn't want your things."
"But why not?" he persisted playfully. "They are very nice things. Not right for Outland, but perfectly right for a little house. We chose them with care, and we don't want them going into some dirty second-hand shop."
"They won't have to. We can store them in the attic at Outland, Heaven knows it's big enough! You don't have to do anything with them just now."
"It seems a pity, when somebody might be getting the good of them. I know Scott could do very well with that chiffonier of mine. He admired it greatly, I remember, and said he'd never had one with proper drawers for his shirts."
Rosamond's lip curled.
"Don't look like that, Rosie! It's naughty. Stop it!" Louie reached forward and shook her gently by the elbows. "And how can you be sure the McGregors wouldn't like our things, when you've never asked them? What positive ideas she does get into her head!"
"They wouldn't want them because they are ours, yours and mine, if you will have it," she said coldly, drawing away from him.
Louie sank back into his seat and gave it up. "Why do you think such naughty things? I don't believe it, you know! You are so touchy. Scott and Kitty may be a little stand-offish, but it might very possibly make them feel better if you went at them nicely about this." He rallied and began to coax again. "She's got it into her head that the McGregors have a grudge, Doctor. There's nothing to it."
Rosamond had grown quite pale. Her upper lip, that was so like her mother's when she was affable, so much harder when she was not, came down like a steel curtain. "I happen to know, Louie, that Scott blackballed you for the Arts and Letters. You can call that a grudge or not, as you please."
Marsellus was visibly shaken. He looked sad. "Well, if he did, it wasn't very nice of him, certainly. But are you sure, Rosie? Rumours do go about, and people like to stir up family differences."
"It isn't people, and it's not rumour. I know it positively. Kathleen's best friend told me."
Louie lay back and shook with laughter. "Oh, the ladies, the ladies! What they do to each other, Professor!"
St. Peter was very uncomfortable. "I don't think I'd accept such evidence, Rosamond. I don't believe it of Scott, and I think Louie has the right idea. People are like children, and Scott's poor and proud. I think Louie's chiffonier would go to his heart, if Louie offered it to him. I'm afraid you wouldn't do it very graciously."
"Professor, I'll go to McGregor's office and put it up to him. If he scorns it, so much the worse for him. He'll lose a very handy piece of furniture."
Rosamond's paleness changed to red. Fortunately they were spinning over the gravel loops that led through shaven turf to the Country Club. "You can do as you like with your own things, Louie. But I don't want any of mine in the McGregors' bungalow. I know Scott's brand of humour too well, and the kind of jokes that would be made about them."
The car stopped. Louie sprang out and gave his arm to his wife. He walked up the steps to the door with her, and his back expressed such patient, protecting kindness that the Professor bit his lower lip with indignation. Louie came back looking quite grey and tired, and sank into the seat beside the Professor with a sadder-and-wiser smile.
"Louie," St. Peter spoke with deep feeling, "do you happen to have read a novel of Henry James,The American?There's a rather nice scene in it, in which a young Frenchman, hurt in a duel, apologizes for the behaviour of his family. I'd like to do something of the sort. I apologize to you for Rosamond, and for Scott, if he has done such a mean thing."
Louie's downcast face brightened at once. He squeezed the Professor's arm warmly. "Oh,that'sall right, sir! As for Scott, I can understand. He was the first son of the family, and he was the whole thing. Then I came along, a stranger, and carried off Rosie, and this patent began to pay so well—it's enough to make any man jealous, and he a Scotchman! But I think Scott will come around in the end; people usually do, if you treat them well, and I mean to. I like the fellow. As for Rosamond, you mustn't give that a thought. I love her when she's naughty. She's a bit unreasonable sometimes, but I'm always hoping for a period of utter, of fantastic unreasonableness, which will be the beginning of a great happiness for us all."
"Louie, you are magnanimous and magnificent!" murmured his vanquished father-in-law.
Lillian and the Marselluses sailed for France early in May. The Professor, left alone, had plenty of time to spray his rose-vines, and his garden had never been so beautiful as it was that June. After his university duties were over, he smuggled his bed and clothing back to the old house and settled down to a leisurely bachelor life. He realized that he ought to be getting to work. The garden, in which he sat all day, was no longer a valid excuse to keep him from his study. But the task that awaited him up there was difficult. It was a little thing, but one of those little things at which the hand becomes self-conscious, feels itself stiff and clumsy.
It was his plan to give part of this summer to Tom Outland's diary—to edit and annotate it for publication. The bother was that he must write an introduction. The diary covered only about six months of the boy's life, a summer he spent on the Blue Mesa, and in it there was almost nothing about Tom himself. To mean anything, it must be prefaced by a sketch of Outland, and some account of his later life and achievements. To write of his scientific work would be comparatively easy. But that was not all the story; his was a many-sided mind, though a simple and straightforward personality.
Of course Mrs. St. Peter had insisted that he was not altogether straightforward; but that was merely because he was not altogether consistent. As an investigator he was clear-sighted and hard-headed; but in personal relations he was apt to be exaggerated and quixotic. He idealized the people he loved and paid his devoir to the ideal rather than to the individual, so that his behaviour was sometimes a little too exalted for the circumstances—"chivalry of the cinema," Lillian used to say. One of his sentimental superstitions was that he must never on any account owe any material advantage to his friends, that he must keep affection and advancement far apart, as if they were chemicals that would disintegrate each other. St. Peter thought this the logical result of Tom's strange bringing-up and his early associations. There is, he knew, this dream of self-sacrificing friendship and disinterested love down among the day-labourers, the men who run the railroad trains and boats and reapers and thrashers and mine-drills of the world. And Tom had brought it along to the university, where advancement through personal influence was considered honourable.
It was not until Outland was a senior that Lillian began to be jealous of him. He had been almost a member of the family for two years, and she had never found fault with the boy. But after the Professor began to take Tom up to the study and talk over his work with him, began to make a companion of him, then Mrs. St. Peter withdrew her favour. She could change like that; friendship was not a matter of habit with her. And when she was through with anyone, she of course found reasons for her fickleness. Tom, she reminded her husband, Was far from frank, though he had such an open manner. He had been consistently reserved about his own affairs, and she could not believe the facts he withheld were altogether creditable. They had always known he had a secret, something to do with the mysterious Rodney Blake and the bank account in New Mexico upon which he was not at liberty to draw. The young man must have felt the change in her, for he began that winter to make his work a pretext for coming to the house less often. He and St. Peter now met in the alcove behind the Professor's lecture room at the university.
One Sunday, shortly before Tom's Commencement, he came to the house to ask Rosamond to go to the senior dance with him. The family were having tea in the garden; a few days of intensely warm weather had come on and hurried the roses into bloom. Rosamond happened to ask Tom, who sat in his white flannels, fanning himself with his straw hat, if spring in the South-west was as warm as this.
"Oh, no," he replied. "May is usually chilly down there—bright sun, but a kind of edge in the wind, and cool nights. Last night reminded me of smothery May nights in Washington."
Mrs. St. Peter glanced up. "You mean Washington City? I didn't know you had ever been so far east."
There was no denying that the young man looked uncomfortable. He frowned and said in a low voice: "Yes, I've been there. I suppose I don't speak of it because I haven't very pleasant recollections of it."
"How long were you there?" his hostess asked.
"A winter and spring, more than six months. Long enough to get very home-sick." He went away almost at once, as if he were afraid of being questioned further.
The subject came up again a few weeks later, however. After Tom's graduation, two courses were open to him. He was offered an instructorship, with a small salary, in the Physics department under Dr. Crane, and a graduate scholarship at Johns Hopkins University. St. Peter strongly urged him to accept the latter. One evening when the family were discussing Tom's prospects, the Professor summed up all the reasons why he ought to go to Baltimore and work in the laboratory made famous by Dr. Rowland. He assured him, moreover, that he would find the atmosphere of an old Southern city delightful.
"Yes, I know something about the atmosphere," Tom broke out at last. "It is delightful, but it's all wrong for me. It discourages me dreadfully. I used to go over there when I was in Washington, and it always made me blue. I don't believe I could ever work there."
"But can you trust a child's impressions to guide you now, in such an important decision?" asked Mrs. St. Peter gravely.
"I wasn't a child, Mrs. St. Peter. I was as much grown up as I am now—older, in some ways. It was only about a year before I came here."
"But, Tom, you were on the section gang that year! Why do you mix us all up?" Kathleen caught his hand and squeezed the knuckles together, as she did when she wanted to punish him.
"Well, maybe it was two years before. It doesn't matter. It was long enough to count for two ordinary years," he muttered abstractedly.
Again he went away abruptly, and a few days later he told St. Peter that he had definitely accepted the instructorship under Crane, and would stay on in Hamilton.
During that summer after Outland's graduation, St. Peter got to know all there was behind his reserve. Mrs. St. Peter and the two girls were in Colorado, and the Professor was alone in the house, writing on volumes three and four of his history. Tom was carrying on some experiments of his own, over in the Physics laboratory. He and St. Peter were often together in the evening, and on fine afternoons they went swimming. Every Saturday the Professor turned his house over to the cleaning-woman, and he and Tom went to the lake and spent the day in his sail-boat.
It was just the sort of summer St. Peter liked, if he had to be in Hamilton at all. He was his own cook, and had laid in a choice assortment of cheeses and light Italian wines from a discriminating importer in Chicago. Every morning before he sat down at his desk he took a walk to the market and had his pick of the fruits and salads. He dined at eight o'clock. When he cooked a fine leg of lamb, saignant, well rubbed with garlic before it went into the pan, then he asked Outland to dinner. Over a dish of steaming asparagus, swathed in a napkin to keep it hot, and a bottle of sparkling Asti, they talked and watched night fall in the garden. If the evening happened to be rainy or chilly, they sat inside and read Lucretius.
It was on one of those rainy nights, before the fire in the dining-room, that Tom at last told the story he had always kept back. It was nothing very incriminating, nothing very remarkable; a story of youthful defeat, the sort of thing a boy is sensitive about—until he grows older.
The thing that side-tracked me and made me so late coming to college was a somewhat unusual accident, or string of accidents. It began with a poker game, when I was a call boy in Pardee, New Mexico.
One cold, clear night in the fall I started out to hunt up a freight crew that was to go out soon after midnight. It was just after pay day, and one of the fellows had tipped me off that there would be a poker game going on in the card-room behind the Ruby Light saloon. I knew most of my crew would be there, except Conductor Willis, who had a sick baby at home. The front windows were dark, of course. I went up the back alley, through a tumble-down ice house and a court, into a 'dobe room that didn't open into the saloon proper at all. It was crowded, and hot and stuffy enough. There were six or seven in the game, and a crowd of fellows were standing about the walls, rubbing the whitewash off on to their coat shoulders. There was a bird-cage hanging in one window, covered with an old flannel shirt, but the canary had wakened up and was singing away for dear life. He was a beautiful singer—an old Mexican had trained him—and he was one of the attractions of the place.
I happened along when a jack-pot was running. Two of the fellows I'd come for were in it, and they naturally wanted to finish the hand. I stood by the door with my watch, keeping time for them. Among the players I saw two sheep men who always liked a lively game, and one of the bystanders told me you had to buy a hundred dollars' worth of chips to get in that night. The crowd was fussing about one fellow, Rodney Blake, who had come in from his engine without cleaning up. That wasn't customary; the minute a man got in from his run, he took a bath, put on citizen's clothes, and went to a barber. This Blake was a new fireman on our division. He'd come up town in his greasy overalls and sweaty blue shirt, with his face streaked up with smoke. He'd been drinking; he smelled of it, and his eyes were out of focus. All the other men were clean and freshly shaved, and they were sore at Blake—said his hands were so greasy they marked the cards. Some of them wanted to put him out of the game, but he was a big, heavy-built fellow, and nobody wanted to be the man to do it. It didn't please them any better when he took the jack-pot.
I got my two men and hurried them out, and two others from the row along the wall took their places. One of the chaps who left with me asked me to go up to his house and get his grip with his work clothes. He'd lost every cent of his pay cheque and didn't want to face his wife. I asked him who was winning.
"Blake. The dirty boomer's been taking everything. But the fellows will clean him out before morning."
About two o'clock, when my work for that night was over and I was going home to sleep, I just dropped in at the card-room to see how things had come out. The game was breaking up. Since I left them at midnight, they had changed to stud poker, and Blake, the fireman, had cleaned everybody out. He was cashing in his chips when I came in. The bank was a little short, but Blake made no fuss about it. He had something over sixteen hundred dollars lying on the table before him in banknotes and gold. Some of the crowd were insulting him, trying to get him into a fight and loot him. He paid no attention and began to put the money away, not looking at anybody. The bills he folded and put inside the band of his hat. He filled his overalls pockets with the gold, and swept the rest of it into his big red neckerchief.
I'd been interested in this fellow ever since he came on our division; he was close-mouthed and unfriendly. He was one of those fellows with a settled, mature body and a young face, such as you often see among working-men. There was something calm, and sarcastic, and mocking about his expression—that, too, you often see among working-men. When he had put all his money away, he got up and walked toward the door without a word, without saying good-night to anybody.
"Manners of a hog, and a dirty hog!" little Barney Shea yelled after him. Blake's back was just in the doorway; he hitched up one shoulder, but didn't turn or make a sound.
I slipped out after him and followed him down the street. His walk was unsteady, and the gold in his baggy overalls pockets clinked with every step he took. I ran a little way and caught up with him. "What are you going to do with all that money, Blake?" I asked him.
"Lose it, to-morrow night. I'm no hog for money. Damned barber-pole dudes!"
I thought I'd better follow him home. I knew he lodged with an old Mexican woman, in the yellow quarter, behind the round-house. His room opened on to the street, by a sky-blue door. He went in, didn't strike a light or make a stab at undressing, but threw himself just as he was on the bed and went to sleep. His hat stuck between the iron rods of the bed-head, the gold ran out of his pockets and rolled over the bare floor in the dark.
I struck a match and lit a candle. The bed took up half the room; on the dresser was a grip with his clean clothes in it, just as he'd brought it in from his run. I took out the clothes and began picking up the money; got the bills out of his hat, emptied his pockets, and collected the coins that lay in the hollow of the bed about his hips, and put it all into the grip. Then I blew out the light and sat down to listen. I trusted all the boys who were at the Ruby Light that night, except Barney Shea. He might try to pull something off on a stranger, down in Mexican town. We had a quiet night, however, and a cold one. I found Blake's winter overcoat hanging on the wall and wrapped up in it. I wasn't a bit sorry when the roosters began to crow and the dogs began barking all over Mexican town. At last the sun came up and turned the desert and the 'dobe town red in a minute. I began to shake the man on the bed. Waking men who didn't want to get up was part of my job, and I didn't let up on him until I had him on his feet.
"Hello, kid, come to call me?"
I told him I'd come to call him to a Harvey House breakfast. "You owe me a good one. I brought you home last night."
"Sure, I'm glad to have company. Wait till I wash up a bit." He took his soap and towel and comb and went out into the patio, a neat little sanded square with flowers and vines all around, and washed at the trough under the pump. Then he called me to come and pump water on his head. After he'd stood the gush of cold water for a few seconds, he straightened up with his teeth chattering.
"That ought to get the whisky out of a fellow's head, oughtn't it? Felt good, Tom." Presently he began feeling his side pockets. "Was I dreaming something, or did I take a string of jack-pots last night?"
"The money's in your grip," I told him. "You don't deserve it, for you were too drunk to take care of it. I had to come after you and pick it up out of the mud."
"All right. I'll go halvers. Easy come, easy go."
I told him I didn't want anything off him but breakfast, and I wanted that pretty soon.
"Go easy, son. I've got to change my shirt. This one's wet."
"It's worse than wet. You oughtn't to go up town without changing. You're a stranger here, and it makes a bad impression."
He shrugged his shoulders and looked superior. He had a square-built, honest face and steady eyes that didn't carry a cynical expression very well. I knew he was a decent chap, though he'd been drinking and acting ugly ever since he'd been on our division.
After breakfast we went out and sat in the sun at a place where the wooden sidewalk ran over a sand gully and made a sort of bridge. I had a long talk with him. I was carrying the grip with his winnings in it, and I finally persuaded him to go with me to the bank. We put every cent of it into a savings account that he couldn't touch for a year.
From that night Blake and I were fast friends. He was the sort of fellow who can do anything for somebody else, and nothing for himself. There are lots like that among working-men. They aren't trained by success to a sort of systematic selfishness. Rodney had been unlucky in personal relations. He'd run away from home when he was a kid because his mother married again—a man who had been paying attention to her while his father was still alive. He got engaged to a girl down on the Southern Pacific, and she double-crossed him, as he said. He went to Old Mexico and let his friends put all his savings into an oil well, and they skinned him. What he needed was a pal, a straight fellow to give an account to. I was ten years younger, and that was an advantage. He liked to be an older brother. I suppose the fact that I was a kind of stray and had no family, made it easier for him to unbend to me. He surely got to think a lot of me, and I did of him. It was that winter I had pneumonia. Mrs. O'Brien couldn't do much for me; she was overworked, poor woman, with a houseful of children. Blake took me down to his room, and he and the old Mexican woman nursed me. He ought to have had boys of his own to look after. Nature's full of such substitutions, but they always seem to me sad, even in botany.
I wasn't able to be about until spring, and then the doctor and Father Duchene said I must give up night work and live in the open all summer. Before I knew anything about it, Blake had thrown up his job on the Santa Fé, and got a berth for him and me with the Sitwell Cattle Company. Jonas Sitwell was one of the biggest cattle men in our part of New Mexico. Roddy and I were to ride the range with a bunch of grass cattle all summer, then take them down to a winter camp on the Cruzados river and keep them on pasture until spring.
We went out about the first of May, and joined our cattle twenty miles south of Pardee, down toward the Blue Mesa. The Blue Mesa was one of the landmarks we always saw from Pardee—landmarks mean so much in a flat country. To the northwest, over toward Utah, we had the Mormon Buttes, three sharp blue peaks that always sat there. The Blue Mesa was south of us, and was much stronger in colour, almost purple. People said the rock itself had a deep purplish cast. It looked, from our town, like a naked blue rock set down alone in the plain, almost square, except that the top was higher at one end. The old settlers said nobody had ever climbed it, because the sides were so steep and the Cruzados river wound round it at one end and under-cut it.