WELCOME CALLERS
Nan decided to explain to Eaton that Farley’s illness had taken a turn
for the worse and that he had been abusing her as a relief from his
suffering. She was surprised to find two men in the parlor, the second
of whom she did not at once recognize as Jerry.
“I’ve taken the liberty,” Eaton began, “of bringing Mr. Amidon along.
Thought you wouldn’t mind, particularly as I couldn’t have come myself
without him. He dropped in just as I was leaving and seemed greatly
depressed; I hadn’t the heart to leave him. Depression is his normal
state--no serenity, no hope, no vision!”
Amidon grinned during this explanation, realizing that its lack
of veracity was, in the circumstances, peculiarly Eatonesque and
attributable to his friend’s wish to relieve Nan of embarrassment. They
had been uncomfortable from the moment the maid admitted them and they
became conscious of the discord above. Words and phrases of Farley’s
furious arraignment had reached them and there was no escaping the
conclusion that she had been the object of the castigation. Jerry,
acting on his own impulses, would have grabbed his hat and bolted. It
was only the demeanor of his idol, placidly staring at the wall, that
held him back. The call had been suggested by Eaton as a gay social
adventure, but it was disconcerting to find a girl whose good fortune
had seemed so enviable with tears in her eyes, nervously fingering
a moist handkerchief, and Jerry’s wits were severely taxed by his
efforts to meet a situation without precedent in his experience. Once
he had called on a girl whose father came home drunk and manifested
an ambition to destroy the furniture and use the pieces in the
chastisement of his daughter, and Amidon had enjoyed a brief, decisive
engagement with the inebriated parent and had then put him to bed. But
there was nothing in that incident that bore in the slightest degree
upon the difficulties of people who lived in the best street in town,
where, he had always assumed, the prosperous householders dwelt in
peace and harmony with their fortunate families.
“I’m glad to see you, both of you,” she said, with all the assurance
she could muster. “Papa’s been having a bad time; you must have heard
him talking. He’s very angry. I wish you’d go up, Mr. Eaton, and see if
you can’t talk him into a better humor.”
“If you think it’s all right--” Eaton began dubiously; but he was
amused at Nan’s cheerful willingness to turn her angry foster-parent
over to him for pacification. It was like Nan!
“Oh, he’d been looking forward to seeing you,” she answered quite
honestly. “These spells don’t last long; the very sight of you will
cheer him.”
She did not, however, offer to accompany him to Farley’s room, but
discreetly left him to test the atmosphere for himself.
“Well,” Jerry remarked, when he was alone with Nan, “Pittsburg put it
over on New York to-day. Three to nothing!”
He gave the score with a jubilant turn to the “nothing,” as though
Pittsburg’s success called for universal rejoicing.
Nan, intent upon catching some hint of the nature of Eaton’s reception,
merely murmured her mild pleasure in this news. She was satisfied, from
the calm that reigned above, that Eaton had begun well, and that under
the spell of his presence Farley would soon be restored to tranquillity.
“Sorry Mr. Farley is having a bad time,” Jerry went on, thinking the
invalid’s outbreak required at least a passing reference. “You know
down at the store the boys still talk about him. Somebody’s always
telling how he used to do things, and the funny things he used to say.
When I first struck the plant, he used to scare me to death, sticking
his nose in the shipping-room without notice and catching the boys
larking. Once I had gone to the mat with a plumber that was looking
for a gas-leak, and the boss came in and got us both by the collar
and threw us down the stairs like a pair of old shoes. I thought I
was a goner for sure when he sent for me to come to the office that
night and asked me who started the trouble. I told him the plumber
said whenever he found gas-leaks in jobbing houses he always reckoned
somebody was getting ready to collect the insurance. Uncle Tim--that’s
what the boys call him--asked me if I’d hit him hard, and I told him I
guess he’d have considerable business with the dentist, all right. Just
for that he raised my wages a dollar a week! Say, can you beat it!”
He snapped his fingers and shook his head impatiently.
“Isn’t that rank--just after Cecil lectured me all the way up here
about cutting out slang! I promised him solemnly before we started that
I wouldn’t say _say_; and here I’ve already done it! How do you learn
to talk like white folks, anyhow? I suppose you got to be born to it;
it must be like swimming or rowing a boat, that you learn once and
always catch the stroke right.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Nan consolingly. “I use a
good deal of slang myself; and at school my English teacher said it
wasn’t such a sin if we used it as though we were quoting--we girls
held up two fingers--so!”
“That sounds reasonable, all right; I must tell my noble knight about
that. It seems sometimes as though I just couldn’t get a ball over the
plate--there I go again! And Cecil warned me specially against talking
like a bleacher hoodlum when we got here.”
“Oh, that’s not worth bothering about. I’m so glad to see you that I
could cry for joy. If you hadn’t come when you did, I don’t know what
might have happened.”
He had been trying to direct the talk into other channels, and her
remark puzzled him. That this wholly charming, delightful Nan could
have given her benefactor cause for the objurgations he had heard
poured out upon her was unbelievable. Still, it was rather pleasant
than otherwise to find that she was human, capable of tears, and it was
not less than flattering that she should invite his sympathy.
“Well,” he began cautiously, “I guess we all have our troubles. Life
ain’t such an easy game. You think you’re sailing along all right,
and suddenly something goes wrong and you’ve got to climb out and
study astronomy through the bottom of the machine. Why,” he continued
expansively, finding that he had her attention, “when I first went on
the road I used to get hot when I struck some mutt who pulled lower
prices on me or said he was over-stocked. But you don’t sell any
goods by getting mad. I picked up one of these ‘Keep Smiling’ cards
somewhere, and when I got blue I used to take a sneaking look at it and
put on a grin and tell the stony-hearted merchant the funniest story
I could think of and prove that our figures f.o.b. Peanutville were
cheaper, when you figured in the freight, than Chicago or Cincinnati
prices. I’ve made a study of freight tariffs; I can tell you the
freight on white elephants all the way from Siam to Keokuk and back to
Bangkok. I’ve heard the old boys down at the store talk about Farley
till I know all his curves. Farley’s all right; there’s nothing the
matter with Uncle Tim; only--you don’t want to shift gears on him too
quick. You’ve got to do it gentle-like.”
Nan smiled forlornly, but Amidon was glad that he could evoke any sort
of smile from her.
“It was all my fault,” she said. And then with a frankness that
surprised her she added: “I had deceived him about something and he
caught me at it. He gave me a big blowing-up, and I deserved it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say _that_; but, of course, playing the game straight
was always a big card with him. I guess Cecil will smooth him down.”
She was surprised to find herself talking to him so freely; his
eagerness to take her mind away from the unpleasant episode with
Farley gave her a comforting sense of his native kindliness. Her heart
warmed with liking for him as she reappraised his good looks, his
well-scrubbed appearance of a boy turned out for his first party by
a doting mother; his general air of wholesomeness and good humor. He
had known hard knocks, she did not question, but the bruises were well
hidden. With all his slanginess and volubility there was a certain
high-mindedness about him to which, in her hunger for sympathy, she
gave fullest value.
He was afraid of her further confidences; afraid that she would
disclose something she would regret later, and this he foresaw might
embarrass their subsequent relations. She had been humiliated by
Farley’s abuse, and it was not fair, he argued, to take advantage of
her present state of mind by allowing her to tell more of the trouble.
But he was not able at once to change the current of her thoughts.
“You know,” she said, sitting up straight and folding her hands on her
knees, “I’ve been thinking a lot of things since I saw you out there
by the river--about old times, and wondering whether it was good or
bad luck that took me away from Belleville and brought me up here.
I’d have been better off if I’d stayed there. I’d probably have been
washing dishes in the Belleville hotel if the Farleys hadn’t picked me
up, a dirty little beggar, and tried to make something decent out of
me! I’m saying that to you because you know all about me. You’ve made
your own way, and you’re a lot happier than I am, and you’re not under
obligations to anybody; and here I am trying to climb a ladder my feet
weren’t made for!”
“Cut all that out!” he expostulated. “Just because Uncle Tim’s been a
little fretful, you needn’t think everything’s gone to the bow-wows.
And as for staying in Belleville, why, the thought of it gives me
shivers! There ain’t any use talking about that.”
Her face expressed relief at the vigor with which he sprang to her
defense, and he plunged ahead.
“Say, speaking of dining-room girls, there was a girl at that
Belleville hotel that was some girl for sure. She was fruit to the
passing eye, and a mutt carrying samples for a confectionery house
called her Gladys one day, her real name being Sarah, and asked her
how she’d like going to the movies with him after she got the dishes
washed; and she landed one order of poached cold-storage eggs on his
bosom the neatest you ever saw. Some men never learn how to size up
character, and any fool could ’a’ told that that girl wasn’t open to a
jolly from a sweet-goods peddler who’d never passed that way before.
Sarah’s mother owns the hotel, and Sarah only helps in the dining-room
Saturday nights to let the regular crockery-smasher off to punch the
ivories for the Methodist choir practice. I was sitting next that chap
and he thought he’d show me what a winner he was. I’m not justifying
Sarah’s conduct, and about a half-portion of the golden side of that
order caught me on the ear. I merely mention it to show you that you
had better not think much of the life of the dining-room girl, which
ain’t all the handbills make out.”
“I hope,” remarked Nan, “that she didn’t break the plate!”
“No more,” he came back promptly, “than you could break a ten-dollar
bill at a charity fair. That’s another thing I learned from Cecil.
He got me to take a stroll with him through a charity bazaar last
winter--just to protect him from the snares of the huntress, he said.
He started in with ten tens and had to borrow five I was hiding from
my creditors before we got back to the door. And all we carried out of
the place was a pink party-bag Cecil handed a tramp we found freezing
to death outside and hoping a little charity would ooze through the
windows.”
“I was at the fancy-work counter at the fair,” said Nan, “and I
remember that Mr. Eaton bought something. I didn’t see you, though.”
“I noticed that you didn’t; I was plumb scared you might! There I go
again! _Plumb scared!_ Oh, Cecil, if you had heard me then!”
He was wondering just how he happened to be sitting in a parlor on a
fashionable street, talking to the only girl he had ever known whose
name figured in the society columns, quite as jauntily as he talked
with any of the stenographers or salesgirls he knew. He was confident
that parlor conversation among the favored of heaven was not of the
sort he had, in his own phrase, been “handing out.” This thought gave
him pause. He shook his cuffs from under the sleeves of his blue serge
coat with a gesture he had caught from Eaton, and felt nervously of the
knot of his four-in-hand.
Nan was asking herself whether the fact that a young fellow of Amidon’s
deficiencies could interest and amuse her wasn’t pretty substantial
proof that he was the kind of young man the gods had designed for her
companions. A year ago she would have resented his appearance in the
house; to-night she had a feeling that his right to be there was as
sound as her own. A different fling of the dice, and it might have been
he whom the Farleys rescued from poverty and obscurity.
In spite of his absurdities, she was conscious of definite manly
qualities in him. Several times she caught him scrutinizing her
sharply, as though something about her puzzled him and gave him
concern. His manners were very good--thanks, perhaps, to his adored
Eaton; and she liked his clean, fresh look and good humor. After her
talk with Eaton on the golf links, she had wondered whether the lawyer
wasn’t making a butt of him; but she dismissed this now as unjust to
Eaton, and as appraising Amidon’s intelligence at too low a figure.
During this reverie he waited patiently for her to speak, imagining
that her mind was still upon her troubles, and when the silence became
prolonged he rallied for a fresh attack.
“If you’d rather read,” he remarked, “we’ll hang up the silence sign
the way they have it in the library reading-room and I’ll say prayers
till Cecil comes down.”
“Oh, pardon me!” she laughed contritely. “You see I am treating you as
an old friend. Why don’t you go on and talk. You’ve had ever so many
interesting adventures, and I need to be amused. Please don’t think I’m
always like this; I hope you’ll see me some time when I’m not in the
dumps.”
“I should be afraid to,” he retorted boldly; and then feeling that
Eaton would have spurned such banality, ejaculated: “Oh, rot! Let me
scratch that out and say something decent. Just for instance,”--and his
face sobered,--“I think you’re nice! You were perfectly grand to me
that day down on the river. I told Cecil about that, and I could see it
made a hit with him; it set me up with him--that a girl like you would
be polite to a scrub like me.”
“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “I’m not proud of myself: I’m a failure,
a pretty sad fizzle, at that.”
She ignored his rapid phrases of protest and asked him how much time he
spent in town.
“Well, I’m likely to spend a good deal, from now on. The boss has been
shaking things up again, and he called me in by telephone yesterday and
changed my job. That’s the way with him; he won’t show up sometimes
for six weeks, and then he gets down early some morning and scares
everybody to death.
“I thought I was settled on the road for the rest of my life, and
now he’s made a job for me to help the credit man--who doesn’t want
me--and take country customers out to lunch. A new job made just for
my benefit. And all because of a necktie Cecil gave me. The boss saw
me sporting it one day and asked me where I got it. I had to make a
show-down, and he thought I was kidding him. You see Cecil’s about
the last man he’d ever think of giving me presents. If I’d laid that
necktie on any other living human being, it wouldn’t have cut a bit of
ice; but when I said, as fresh as paint, ‘John Cecil Eaton picked that
up in New York for me,’ he laughed right out loud. ‘What’s the joke?’
I asked him; and he says, ‘Oh, Eaton never gave me any haberdashery,
and I’ve known him all my life.’ And like the silly young zebra I
am, I came back with, ‘Well, maybe that’s the reason!’ You’d have
thought he’d fire me for that; but it seemed to sort o’ make us better
acquainted. He’s the prince, all right!”
She had been trying, more or less honestly, to put Copeland out of her
mind. Her knowledge of him as a business man had been the haziest; one
never thought of Billy Copeland as a person preoccupied with business.
She was startled when Amidon asked abruptly:--
“Of course, you know the boss?”
It was possible that Amidon had heard the gossip that connected her
name with his employer’s, and she answered carelessly:--
“Oh, yes; I know Mr. Copeland.”
“I guess everybody knows William B.,” said Amidon. “He’s got the
pep--unadulterated cayenne; he isn’t one of these corpses that are
holding the town back. He’s a live wire, all right.”
Then, realizing that he had ventured upon thin ice in mentioning
Copeland, he came back to shore at once.
“Cecil said that this being my first call, about thirty minutes would
do for me, so I guess it’s time for me to skid. He must be handing out
a pretty good line of talk on the upper deck.”
She begged him not to leave her alone, saying that Farley lived by
rules fixed by his doctor and that the nurse was likely to interrupt
the call at any minute. As he stood uncertain whether to go or wait for
Eaton, they heard the lawyer saying good-bye, and in a moment he came
down.
Nan looked at him quickly, but was able to read nothing in his
impassive face.
“I hope you two have been getting better acquainted,” Eaton remarked.
“Mr. Farley and I have had a splendid talk; I never found him more
amusing. One of the most interesting men I ever knew! What have you
been talking about? The silence down here has been ominously painful!”
“Mr. Amidon has been telling me of the egg-throwing habits of the
waitresses in my native town. Life here in the city is nothing to what
it is down on the river. He’s almost made me homesick!”
“My dear Amidon,” said Eaton severely, “have you been telling that
story--in a private house? I thought when I brought you here you’d be
on your good behavior. I’m sorry, Nan; I apologize for him. Of course,
he mustn’t come back; I’ll see to it that he doesn’t.”
“Don’t be cruel!” laughed Nan. “We got on beautifully!”
They heard Farley’s groans and mutterings as the nurse put him to bed,
and it seemed necessary to refer to him again before the men left.
“You won’t mind, Nan,” said Eaton, “if I say that Mr. Farley told me
the cause of your little difficulty; I know the whole story. I think he
probably won’t mention it to you again. I asked him not to. Just go on
as though nothing had happened. It was unfortunate, of course; but I’ve
persuaded him that your conduct is pardonable--really quite admirable
from your standpoint. If anything further arises in regard to it, I
wish you’d communicate with me, immediately.”
Ignoring her murmurs of gratitude, he turned to Jerry.
“Amidon, at this point we shake hands and move rapidly up the
street. And, Nan, you needn’t be troubled because Mr. Amidon heard
the last echoes of your difficulty. He’s perfectly safe,--discreet,
wise,--though you’d never guess it. You may safely assume that he heard
nothing. We must have some golf, you and I. My game’s coming up!”
She went with them to the street door, where Amidon, in executing a
final bow, nearly fell backward down the steps.