and dictate a plan of operations. I was justified in feeling proud of
myself. Most men would have tamely submitted to their fate instead of
chasing up all the Joneses of Jonesville! Freddy sent me an early
answer--a gay, happy, overflowing little note--telling me to try and
engage Doctor Jones for a three-day house-party at Morristown. I was to
telegraph when he could come, and was promised an official invitation
from Mrs. Matthewman. (She was the aunt, you know, that they lived
with--one of those old porcelain ladies with a lace cap and a
rent-roll.) However, I could not do anything for two days, for we had
reached a crisis in the labor troubles, and matters were approaching the
breaking point. We were threatened with one of those "sympathetic"
strikes that drive business men crazy. There was no question at issue
between ourselves and our employes; but the thing ramified off somewhere
to the sugar vacuum-boiler riveters' union. Finally the S.V.B.R.U. came
to a settlement with their bosses, and peace was permitted to descend on
Hodge & Westoby's.
I took immediate advantage of it to descend myself on Doctor Jones. He
received me with open arms and an insomniacal outburst. He had been
reading up; he had been seeing distinguished confrères; he had been
mastering the subject to the last dot, and was panting to begin. I hated
to dampen such friendship and ardor by telling him that I had completely
recovered. Under the circumstances it seemed brutal--but I did it. The
poor fellow tried to argue with me, but I insisted that I now slept like
a top. It sounded horribly ungrateful. Here I was spurning the treasures
of his mind, and almost insulting him with my disgusting good health. I
swerved off to the house-party; Eleanor's delight, and so on; Mrs.
Matthewman's pending invitation; the hope that he might have an early
date free--
He listened to it all in silence, walking restlessly about the office,
his blue eyes shining with a strange light. He took up a bronze
paper-weight and gazed at it with an intensity of self-absorption.
"I can't go," he said.
"Oh, but you have to," I exclaimed.
"Mr. Westoby," he resumed, "I was foolish enough to back a friend's
credit at a store here. He has skipped to Minnesota, and I am left with
three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents to pay. To take a
three days' holiday would be a serious matter to me at any time, but at
this moment it is impossible."
I gave him a good long look. He didn't strike me as a borrowing kind of
man. I should probably insult him by volunteering. Was there ever
anything so unfortunate?
"I can't go," he repeated with a little choke.
"You may never have another opportunity," I said. "Eleanor is doing a
thing I should never have expected from one of her proud and reserved
nature. The advances of such a woman--"
He interrupted me with a groan.
"If it wasn't for my mother I'd throw everything to the winds and fly to
her," he burst out. "But I have a mother--a sainted mother, Mr.
Westoby--her welfare must always be my first consideration!"
"Is there no chance of anything turning up?" I said. "An appendicitis
case--an outbreak of measles? I thought there was a lot of scarlatina
just now."
He shook his head dejectedly.
"Doctor," I began again, "I am pretty well fixed myself. I'm blessed
with an income that runs to five figures. If all goes the way it should
we shall be brothers-in-law in six months. We are almost relations. Give
me the privilege of taking over this small obligation--"
I never saw a man so overcome. My proposal seemed to tear the poor devil
to pieces. When he spoke his voice was trembling.
"You don't know what it means to me to refuse," he said. "My
self-respect ... my--my...." And then he positively began to weep!
"You said three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents, I
believe?"
He waved it from him with a long, lean hand.
"I can not do it," he said; "and, for God's sake, don't ask me to!"
I argued with him for twenty minutes; I laid the question before him in
a million lights; I racked him with a picture of Eleanor, so deeply
hurt, so mortified, that in her recklessness and despair she would
probably throw herself away on the first man that offered! This was his
chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece
of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with
me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential
sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and
seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved
my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw myself losing Freddy.
I went away with his "no, no, no!" still ringing in my ears.
At the club I found a note from Freddy. She pressed me to lose no time.
Mrs. Matthewman was talking of going to Europe, and of course she and
Eleanor would have to accompany her. Eleanor, she said, had ordered two
new gowns and had brightened up wonderfully. "Only yesterday she told me
she wished that silly doctor would hurry up and come--and that, you
know, from Eleanor is almost a declaration!"
Some of my best friends happened to be in the club. It occurred to me
that poor Nevill was diabetic, and that Charley Crossman had been boring
everybody about his gout. I buttonholed them both, and laid my
unfortunate predicament before them. I said I'd pay all the expenses. In
fact, the more they could make it cost the better I'd be pleased.
"What," roared Nevill, "put myself in the hands of a young fool so that
he may fill his empty pockets with your money! Where do _I_ come in?
Good heavens, Westoby, you're crazy! Think what would happen to me if it
came to Doctor Saltworthy's ears? He'd never have anything more to do
with me!"
Charley Crossman was equally rebellious and unreasonable.
"I guess you've never had the gout," he said grimly.
"But Charley, old man," I pleaded, "all that you'd have to do would be
to let him _talk_ to you. I don't ask you to suffer for it. Just
pay--that's all--pay my money!"
"I'm awfully easily talked into things," said Charley. (There was never
such a mule on the Produce Exchange.) "He'd be saying, 'Take this'--and
I'm the kind of blankety-blank fool that would take it!"
Then I did a mean thing. I reminded Crossman of having backed some bills
of his--big bills, too--at a time when it was touch and go whether he'd
manage to keep his head above water.
"Westoby," he replied, "don't think that time has lessened my sense of
that obligation. I'd cut off my right hand to do you a good turn. But
for heaven's sake, don't ask me to monkey with my gout!"
The best I could get out of him was the promise of an anemic
servant-girl. Nevill generously threw in a groom with varicose veins.
Small contributions, but thankfully received.
"Now, what you do," said Nevill, "is to go round right off and interview
Bishop Jordan. He has sick people to burn!"
But I said Jones would get on to it if I deluged him with the misery of
the slums.
"That's just where the bishop comes in," said Nevill. "There isn't a man
more in touch with the saddest kind of poverty in New York--the decent,
clean, shrinking poverty that hides away from all the dead-head coffee
and doughnuts. If I was in your fix I'd fall over myself to reach
Jordan!"
"Yes, you try Jordan," said Charley, who, I'm sure, had never heard of
him before.
"Then it's me for Jordan," said I.
I went down stairs and told one of the bell-boys to look up the address
in the telephone-book. It seemed to me he looked pale, that boy.
"Aren't you well, Dan?" I said.
"I don't know what's the matter with me, sir. I guess it must be the
night work."
I gave him a five-dollar bill and made him write down 1892 Eighth Avenue
on a piece of paper.
"You go and see Doctor Jones first thing," I said. "And don't mention my
name, nor spend the money on _Her Mad Marriage_."
I jumped into a hansom with a pleasant sense that I was beginning to
make the fur fly.
"That's a horrible cold of yours, Cabby," I said as we stopped at the
bishop's door and I handed him up a dollar bill. "That's just the kind
of a cold that makes graveyards hum!"
"I can't shake it off, sir," he said despondently. "Try what I can, and
it's never no use!"
"There's one doctor in the world who can cure anything," I said; "Doctor
Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I was worse than you two weeks ago, and
now look at me! Take this five dollars, and for heaven's sake, man, put
yourself in his hands quick."
Bishop Jordan was a fine type of modern clergyman. He was
broad-shouldered mentally as well as physically, and he brought to
philanthropic work the thoroughness, care, enthusiasm and capacity that
would have earned him a fortune in business.
"Bishop," I said, "I've come to see if I can't make a trade with you!"
He raised his grizzled eyebrows and gave me a very searching look.
"A trade," he repeated in a holding-back kind of tone, as though
wondering what the trap was.
"Here's a check for one thousand dollars drawn to your order," I went
on. "And here's the address of Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I
want this money to reach him via your sick people, and that without my
name being known or at all suspected."
"May I not ask the meaning of so peculiar a request?"
"He's hard up," I said, "and I want to help him. It occurred to me that
I might make you--er--a confederate in my little game, you know."
His eyes twinkled as he slowly folded up my check and put it in his
pocket.
"I don't want any economy about it, Bishop," I went on. "I don't want to
make the best use of it, or anything of that kind. I want to slap it
into Doctor Jones' till, and slap it in quick."
"Would you consider two weeks--?"
"Oh, one, please!"
"It is understood, of course, that this young man is a duly qualified
and capable physician, and that in the event of my finding it otherwise
I shall be at liberty to direct your check to other uses?"
"Oh, I can answer for his being all right, Bishop. He's thoroughly
up-to-date, you know; does the X-ray act; and keeps the pace of modern
science."
"You say you can answer for him," said the bishop genially. "Might I
inquire who _you_ are?"
"I'm named Westoby--Ezra Westoby--managing partner of Hodge & Westoby,
boxers."
"I like boxers," said the bishop in the tone of a benediction, rising to
dismiss me. "I like one thousand dollar checks, too. When you have any
more to spare just give them a fair wind in this direction!"
I went out feeling that the Episcopal Church had risen fifty per cent.
in my esteem. Bishops like that would make a success of any
denomination. I like to see a fellow who's on to his job.
I gave Jones a week to grapple with the new developments, and then
happened along. The anteroom was full, and there was a queue down the
street like a line of music-loving citizens waiting to hear Patti.
Nice, decent-looking people, with money in their hands. (I always like
to see a cash business, don't you?) I guess it took me an hour to crowd
my way up stairs, and even then I had to buy a man out of the line.
Jones was carrying off the boom more quietly than I cared about. He wore
a curt, snappy air. I don't know why, but I felt misgivings as I shook
hands with him.
Of course I commented on the rush.
"The Lord only knows what's happened to my practice," he said. "The
blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a
great wave of sickness passing over New York just now."
"Everybody's complaining," I said.
This reminded him of my insomnia till I cut him short.
"What's the matter with our going down to the Van Coorts' from Saturday
to Tuesday," I said. "They haven't given up the hope of seeing you
there, Doctor, and the thing's still open."
Then I waited for him to jump with joy.
He didn't jump a bit. He shook his head. He distinctly said "No."
"I told you it was the money side of it that bothered me," he explained.
"So it was at the time, for, of course, I couldn't foresee that my
practice was going to fill the street and call for policemen to keep
order. But, my dear Westoby, after giving the subject a great deal of
consideration I have come to the conclusion that it would be too painful
for me to revive those--those--unhappy emotions I was just beginning to
recover from!"
"I thought you loved her!" I exclaimed.
"That's why I've determined not to go," he said. "I have outlived one
refusal. How do I know I have the strength, the determination, the
hardihood to undergo the agonies of another?"
It seemed a feeble remark to say that faint heart never won fair lady. I
growled it out more like a swear than anything else. I was disgusted
with the chump.
"She's the star above me," he said; "and I am crushed by my own
presumption. Is there any such fool as the man that breaks his heart
twice for the impossible?"
"But it isn't impossible," I cried. "Hasn't she--as far as a woman
can--hasn't she called you back to her? What more do you expect her to
do? A woman's delicacy forbids her screaming for a man! I think Eleanor
has already gone a tremendous way in just hinting--"
"You may be right," he said pathetically; "but then you may also be
wrong. The risk is too terrible for me to run. It will comfort me all my
life to think that perhaps she does love me in secret!"
"Do you mean to say you're going to give it all up?" I roared.
"You needn't get so warm about it," he returned. "After all, I have some
justification in thinking she doesn't care."
"What on earth do you suppose she invited you for, then?"
"Well, it would be different," he said, "if I had a note from her--a
flower--some little tender reminder of those dear old dead days in the
Pullman!"
"She's saving up all that for Morristown," I said.
For the first time in our acquaintance Doctor Jones looked at me with
suspicion. His blue eyes clouded. He was growing a little restive under
my handling.
"You seem to make the matter a very personal one," he observed.
"Well, I love Freddy," I explained. "It naturally brings your own case
very close to me. And then I am so positive that you love Eleanor and
that Eleanor loves you. Put yourself in my place, Doctor! Do you mean
that you'd do nothing to bring two such noble hearts together?"
He seized my hand and wrung it effusively. He really _did_ love Eleanor,
you know. The only fault with him was his being so darned humble about
it. He was eaten up with a sense of his own inferiority. And yet I could
see he was just tingling to go to Morristown. Of course, I crowded him
all I could, but the best I could accomplish was his promise to "think
it over." I hated to leave him wabbling, but patients were scuffling at
the door and fighting on the stairs.
The next thing I did was to get Freddy on the long-distance 'phone.
"Freddy," I said, after explaining the situation, "you must get Eleanor
to telegraph to him direct!"
"What's the good of asking what she won't do?" bubbled the sweet little
voice.
"Can't you persuade her?"
"I know she won't do it!"
"Then you must forge it," I said desperately. "It needn't be anything
red-hot, you know. But something tender and sincere: 'Shall be awfully
disappointed if you don't come,' or, 'There was a time when you would
not have failed me!'"
"It's impossible."
"Then he won't budge a single inch!" I replied.
"Ezra?"
"Darling!"
"Suppose I just signed the telegram Van Coort?"
"The very thing!"
"If he misunderstood it--I mean if he thought it really came from
Eleanor--there couldn't be any fuss about it afterward, could there?"
"And, of course, you'll send the official invitation from Mrs.
Matthewman besides?"
"For Saturday?"
"Yes, Saturday!"
"And _you'll_ come?"
"Just watch me!"
"Ezra, are you happy?"
"That depends on Jones."
"Oh, isn't it exciting?"
"I have the ring in my pocket--"
"But touch wood, won't you?"
"Freddy?"
"Yes--"
"What's the matter with getting some forget-me-nots and mailing them to
Jones in an envelope?"
"All right, I'll attend to it. Eighteen ninety-two Eighth Avenue, isn't
it?"
"Be sure it _is_ forget-me-nots, you know. Don't mix up the language of
flowers, and send him one that says: 'I'm off with a handsomer man,' or,
'You needn't come round any more!'"
"Oh, Ezra, Eleanor is really getting quite worked up!"
"So am I!"
"Wouldn't it be perfectly splendid if--Switch off quick, here's aunt
coming!"
"Mayn't I even say I love you?"
"I daren't say it back, Ezra--she's calling."
"But _do_ you?"
"Yes, unfortunately--"
"Why unfortun--?"
Buzz-buzz-swizzleum-bux-bux!--Aunt had cut us off. However, short as my
talk with Freddy had been, it brightened my whole day.
Late the same afternoon I went back to Doctor Jones. I was prepared to
find him uplifted, but I hadn't counted on his being maudlin. The fellow
was drunk, positively drunk--with happiness. His tongue ran on like a
mill-stream. I had to sit down and have the whole Pullman-car episode
inflicted on me a second time. I was shown the receipt-slip. I was shown
the telegram from Eleanor. I was shown with a whoop the forget-me-nots!
Then he was going on Saturday? I asked. He said he guessed it would take
an earthquake to keep him away, and a pretty big earthquake, too!... Oh,
it was a great moment, and all the greater because I was tremendously
worked up, too. I saw Freddy floating before me, my sweet, girlish,
darling Freddy, holding out her arms ... while Jones gassed and gassed
and gassed....
I left him taking phenacetin for his headache.
III
The house-party had grown a little larger than was originally intended.
On Saturday night we sat down twelve to dinner. Doctor Jones and I
shared a room together, and I must say whatever misgivings I might have
had about him wore away very quickly on closer acquaintance. In the
first place he looked well in evening dress, carrying himself with a
sort of shy, kind air that became him immensely. At table he developed
the greatest of conversational gifts--that of the appreciative and
intelligent listener. I heard one of the guests asking Eleanor who was
that charming young man. Freddy and I hugged each other (I mean
metaphorically, of course) and gloried in his success. In the presence
of an admirer (such is the mystery of women) Eleanor instantly got
fifteen points better looking, and you wouldn't have known her for the
same girl. Freddy thought it was the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gown
she wore, but I could see it was deeper than that. She was thawing in
the sunshine of love, and I'll do Doctor Jones the justice to say that
he didn't hide his affection under a bushel. It was generous enough for
everybody to bask in, and in his pell-mell ardor he took us all to his
bosom. The women loved him for it, and entered into a tacit conspiracy
to gain him the right-of-way to wherever Eleanor was to be found. In
fact, he followed her about like a dog, and she could scarcely move
without stepping on him.
Sunday was even better. One of the housemaids drank some wood-alcohol by
mistake for vichy water, and the resulting uproar redounded to Jones'
coolness, skill and despatch. He dominated the situation and--well, I
won't describe it, this not being a medical work, and the reader
probably being a good guesser. Mrs. Matthewman remarked significantly
that it must be nice to be the wife of a medical man--one would always
have the safe feeling of a doctor at hand in case anything happened at
night! Eleanor said it was a beautiful profession that had for its
object the alleviation of human pain. Freddy jealously tried to get in a
good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me. It was
all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern medicine. Altogether
he sailed through that whole day with flying colors, first with the
housemaid, and then afterward at church, where he was the only one that
knew what Sunday after Epiphany it was. He made it plainer than ever
that he was a model young man and a pattern. Mrs. Matthewman compared
him to her departed husband, and talked about old-fashioned courtesy and
the splendid men of her youth. Everybody fell over everybody else to
praise him. It was a regular Jones boom. People began to write down his
address, and ask him if he'd be free Thursday, or what about Friday, and
started to book seats in advance.
That evening, as I was washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully
whistling _Hiawatha_, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on
a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my
attention was a groan--preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It
worried me--when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every
right to be whistling _Hiawatha_, too.
"What's the matter, Jones?" said I.
He keeled over on the sofa, and groaned louder than ever.
"It isn't possible--that she's refused you?" I exclaimed. He muttered
something about his mother.
"Well, what about your mother?" I said.
"Westoby," he returned, "I guess I was the worst kind of fool ever to
put my foot into this house."
That was nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head to buy
that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement into a garage!
"You see, old man, my mother would never consent to my marrying Eleanor.
I'm in the position of having to choose between her and the woman I
love. And I owe so much to my mother, Westoby. She stinted herself for
years to get me through college; she hardly had enough to eat; she...."
Then he groaned a lot more.
"I can't think that your mother--a mother like yours, Jones--would
consent to stand between you and your lifelong happiness. It's
morbid--that's what I call it--morbid, just to dream of such a thing."
"There's Bertha," he quavered.
"Great Scott, and who's Bertha?"
"The girl my mother chose for me two years ago--Bertha McNutt, you know.
She'd really prefer me not to marry at all, but if I must--it's Bertha,
Westoby--Bertha or nothing!"
"It's too late to say that now, old fellow."
"It's not too late for me to go home this very night."
"Well, Jones," I broke out, "I can't think you'd do such a caddish thing
as that. Think it over for a minute. You come down here; you sweep that
unfortunate girl off her feet; you make love to her with the fury of a
stage villain; you force her to betray her very evident partiality for
you--and then you have the effrontery to say: 'Good-by. I'm off.'"
"My mother--" he began.
"You simply can not act so dishonorably, Jones."
He sat silent for a little while.
"My mother--" he started in again finally.
"Surely your mother loves you?" I demanded.
"That's the terrible part of it, Westoby, she--"
"Pooh!"
"She stinted herself to get me through col--"
"Then why did you ever come here?"
"That's just the question I'm asking myself now."
"I don't see that you have any right to assume all that about your mother,
anyway. Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a thousand--unimpeachable social
position--a little fortune of her own--accomplished, handsome, charming,
sought after--why, if you managed to win such a girl as that your mother
would walk on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha--"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a little
tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for _my_ girl. Good heavens,
love is love, and all the mothers--"
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to our
hostess. If you went away to-night it would be an insult. Whatever you
decide to do later, you've simply got to stay here till Tuesday
morning!"
"Must I?" he said, in the tone of a person who is ordered not to leave
the sinking ship.
"A gentleman has to," I said.
He quavered out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan
of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead,
with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, that fellow--a
tarnation fluff!
IV
It was a pretty glum evening all round. Most of them thought that Jones
had got the chilly mitt. Eleanor looked pale and undecided, not knowing
what to make of Jones' death's-head face. She was resentful and pitying
in turns, and I saw all the material lying around for a first-class
conflagration. Freddy was a bit down on me, too, saying that a smoother
method would have ironed out Jones, and that I had been headlong and
silly. She cried over it, and wouldn't kiss me in the dark; and I was
goaded into saying--well, the course of true love ran in bumps that
night. There was only one redeeming circumstance, and that was my
managing to keep Jones and Eleanor apart. I mean that I insisted on
being number three till at last poor Eleanor said she had a headache,
and forlornly went up to bed.