DIC LENDS MONEY GRATIS
Such an hour as our young friends spent upon the ciphering log would
amply compensate for the trouble of living a very long life.
"Everything," as Rita had asked, was told volubly, until Dic, perhaps by
accident, clasped Rita's hand. His failure to do so earlier in the
afternoon had been an oversight; but after the oversight had been
corrected, comparative silence and watching the fire from the ciphering
log proved a sufficiently pleasant pastime, and amply good enough for
them. Good enough! I hope they have fireplaces and ciphering logs, soft,
magnetic hands, and eloquent silence in paradise, else the place will
surely be a failure.
Snow was falling furiously, and dark winter clouds obscured the sinking
sun, bringing night before its time; and so it happened that Rita did
not see her mother pass the window. The room was dark, save in the
fireplace where Rita and Dic were sitting, illumined by the glow of
hickory embers, and occasionally by a flickering flame that spluttered
from the half-burned back-log. Unexpected and undesired, Mrs. Bays,
followed closely by our friend Williams, entered through the front door.
Dic sprang to his feet, but he was too slow by several seconds, and the
newcomers had ample opportunity to observe his strict attention to the
business in hand. Mrs. Bays bowed stiffly to Dic, and walked to the bed,
where she deposited her wraps.
Williams approached Rita, who was still seated in the fireplace. She
rose and accepted his proffered hand, forgetting in her confusion to
introduce Dic. Roger's self-composure came to his relief.
"This must be Mr. Bright," said he, holding out his hand to Dic. "I have
heard a great deal of you from Miss Bays during the last four months. We
heard in town that you had returned. Since Rita will not introduce me, I
will perform that duty for myself. I am Mr. Williams."
"How do you do," said Dic, as he took Roger's hand.
"I am delighted to meet you," said Williams, which, as we know, was a
polite fiction. Dic had no especial occasion to dispute Williams's
statement, but for some undefined reason he doubted its truth. He did
not, however, doubt his own feelings, but knew that he was not glad to
meet Williams. The words, "I have heard a great deal of you from Miss
Bays during the last four months," had so startled him that he could
think of nothing else. After the narrative of his own adventures, he
had, in imitation of Rita, asked _her_ to tell _him_ "everything"; but
the name of Williams, her four-months' friend, had not been mentioned.
Dic could not know that the girl had forgotten Williams's very existence
in the moment of her joy. Her forgetfulness was the best evidence that
Williams was nothing to her; but, I confess, her failure to speak of him
had an ugly appearance. Williams turned to Rita, and, with a feeling of
satisfaction because Dic was present, handed her a small package,
saying:--
"I have brought you a little Christmas gift."
Rita hesitatingly accepted the package with a whispered "Thank you," and
Mrs. Bays stepped to her side, exclaiming:--
"Ah, how kind of you, Mr. Williams."
Rita, Mrs. Bays, and Williams were facing the fire, and Dic stood back
in the shadow of the room. A deep, black shadow it was to Dic.
Mrs. Bays, taking the package from Rita's hand, opened it; and there,
nestling in a bed of blue velvet, was a tiny watch, rich with jewels,
and far more beautiful than the one Dic had brought from New York.
Encircling the watch were many folds of a massive gold chain. Mrs. Bays
held the watch up to the light of the firelight, and Dic, with an aching
sensation in the region of his heart, saw its richness at a glance. He
knew at once that the giver must be a man of wealth; and when Mrs. Bays
delightedly threw the gold chain over Rita's head, and placed the watch
in her unresisting hand, he remarked that he must be going. Poor,
terrified Rita did not hear Dic's words. Receiving no reply, he took his
hat from the floor where he had dropped it on entering the room several
centuries before, opened the door, and walked out.
All that I have narrated as taking place after Williams entered upon the
scene occurred within the space of two or three minutes, and Rita first
learned that Dic was going when she heard the door close.
"Dic!" she cried, and started to follow him, but her mother caught her
wrist and said sternly:--
"Stay here, Rita. Don't go to the door."
"But, mother--"
"Stay here, I command you," and Rita did not go to the door. Dic met Mr.
Bays at the gate, paused for a word of greeting, and plunged into the
snow-covered forest, while the words "during the last four months" rang
in his ears with a din that was almost maddening.
"She might have told me," he muttered, speaking as if to the storm.
"While I have been thinking of her every moment, she has been listening
to him. But her letters were full of love. She surely loved me when I
met her two hours ago. No woman could feign love so perfectly. She must
love me. I can't believe otherwise. I will see her again to-night and
she will explain all, I am sure. There is no deceit in her." His
returning confidence eased, though it did not cure, his pain. It
substituted another after a little time--suspense. It was not in his
nature to brook suspense, and he determined again and again to see Rita
that evening.
But his suspense was ended without seeing Rita. When he reached home he
found Sukey, blushing and dimpling, before the fire, talking to his
mother.
"Been over to see Rita?" she asked, parting her moist, red lips in a
smile, showing a gleam of her little, white teeth, and dimpling
exquisitely.
"Yes," answered Dic, laconically.
"Thought maybe you would stay for supper," she continued.
"No," replied Dic.
"Perhaps the other fellow was there," remarked Sukey, shrugging her
plump shoulders and laughing softly. Dic did not reply, but drew a chair
to the hearth.
"Guess they're to be married soon," volunteered Sukey. "He has been
coming Saturdays and staying over Sunday ever since you left. Guess he
waited for you to get out of the way. I think he's so handsome. Met him
one Sunday afternoon at the step-off. I went over to see Rita, and her
mother said she had gone to take a walk with Mr. Williams in that
direction after dinner. I knew they would be at the step-off; it's such
a lonely place. He lives in Boston, and they say he's enormously rich."
During the long pause that followed Dic found himself entirely relieved
of suspense. There was certainty to his heart's content. He did not show
his pain; and much to her joy Sukey concluded that Dic did not care
anything about the relations between Williams and Rita.
"Rita showed me the ring he gave her," continued Sukey. Dic winced, but
controlled himself. It was his ring that Sukey had seen on Rita's
finger, but Dic did not know that.
"Some folks envy her," observed the dimpler, staring in revery at the
fire. "She'll have a fine house, servants, and carriages"--Dic
remembered having used those fatal words himself--"and will live in
Boston; but for myself--well, I never intend to marry, but if I do I'll
take one of the boys around here, or I'll die single. The boys here are
plenty good enough for me."
The big, blue eyes, covered by downcast lashes, were carefully examining
a pair of plump, little, brown hands resting in her lap, but after a
pause she flashed a hurried glance upon Dic, which he did not see.
When a woman cruelly wounds a man as Rita had wounded Dic, the first
remedy that suggests itself to the normal masculine mind is another
woman, and the remedy is usually effective. There may not be as good
fish in the sea as the one he wants, but good fish there are, in great
numbers. Balm of Gilead doubtless has curative qualities; but for a
sore, jealous, aching, masculine heart I would every time recommend the
fish of the sea.
Sukey, upon Mrs. Bright's invitation, remained for supper, and Dic, of
course, was compelled to take her home. Upon arrival at the Yates
mansion, Sukey invited Dic to enter. Dic declined. She drew off her
mittens and took his hand.
"Why," she said, "your hands are like ice; you must come in and warm
them. Please do," so Dic hitched his horse under a straw-covered shed
and went in with the remedy. One might have travelled far and wide
before finding a more pleasant remedy than Sukey; but Dic's ailments
were beyond cure, and Sukey's smiles might as well have been wasted upon
her brother snowman in the adjacent field.
Soon after Dic's arrival, all the family, save Sukey, adjourned to the
kitchen, leaving the girl and her "company" to themselves, after the
dangerous manner of the times.
If any member of the family should remain in the room where the young
lady of the house was entertaining a friend, the visitor would consider
himself _persona non grata_, and would come never again. Of course the
Bays family had never retired before Dic; but he had always visited Tom,
not Rita.
The most unendurable part of Williams's visits to Rita was the fact that
they were made to her, and that she was compelled to sit alone with him
through the long evenings, talking as best she could to one man and
longing for another. When that state of affairs exists, and the woman
happens to be a wife, the time soon comes when she sighs for the
pleasures of purgatory; yet we all know some poor woman who meets the
wrong man every day and gives him herself and her life because God, in
His inscrutable wisdom, has permitted a terrible mistake. To this
bondage would Rita's mother sell her.
Dic did not remain long with the tempting little remedy. While his hand
was on the latch she detained him with many questions, and danced about
him in pretty impatience.
"Why do you go?" she asked poutingly.
"You said Bob Kaster was coming," replied Dic.
"Oh, well, you stay and I'll send him about his business quickly
enough," she returned.
"Would you, Sukey?" asked Dic, laughing.
"Indeed, I will," she responded, "or any one else, if you will stay."
She took his hand again, and, leaning against him, smiled pleadingly
into his face. Her smiles were as sweet and enticing as she or any other
girl could make. There were no redder lips, no whiter teeth, nor
prettier dimples than Sukey's on all Blue River or any other river, and
there could be no prettier, more tempting picture than this pouting
little nymph who was pleading with our Joseph not to run away. But Dic,
not caring to remain, hurriedly closed the door and went out into the
comforting storm. After he had gone Sukey went to the ciphering log and
sat gazing meditatively into the fire. Vexation and disappointment
alternately held possession of her soul; but Dic was more attractive to
her because he was unattainable, and she imagined herself greatly
injured and deeply in love. She may have imagined the truth; but Sukey,
though small in herself, had a large, comprehensive heart wherein
several admirers might be accommodated without overtaxing its capacity,
and soon she was comforting herself with Bob Kaster.
There was little rest for Dic that night. Had he been able to penetrate
darkness and log walls, and could he have seen Rita sobbing with her
face buried in her pillow, he might have slept soundly. But darkness and
log walls are not to be penetrated by ordinary eyes.
Riding home from Sukey's, Dic thought he had learned to hate Rita. He
swore mighty oaths that he would never look upon her face again. But
when he had rested a little time in bed he recalled her fair face, her
gentleness, her honesty, and her thousand perfections. He remembered the
small hand he had held so tenderly a few hours since. Its magnetic
touch, soft as the hand of a duchess, still tingled through his nerves.
With these memories came an anguish that beat down his pride, and, like
Rita, he clasped his hands over his head, turned his face to his pillow,
and alas! that I should say it of a strong man, wept bitter, scalding
tears.
Do the real griefs of life come with age? If Dic should live till his
years outnumbered those of Methuselah, no pain could ever come to him
worthy of mention compared to this. It awakened him to the quality and
quantity of his love. It seemed that he had loved her ever since she
lisped his name and clung to his finger in tottering babyhood. He looked
back over the years and failed to see one moment in all the myriads of
moments when he did not believe himself first in her heart as she had
always been first in his; and now, after he had waited patiently, and
after she, out of her own full heart, had confessed her woman's love,
after she had given him herself in abject, sweet surrender, and had
taken him for her own, the thought of her perfidy was torture to him.
Then came again like a soothing balm the young memory of their last
meeting. He recalled and weighed every word, act, and look. Surely, he
thought, no woman could feign the love she had shown for him. She had
not even tried to show her love. It had been irrepressible. Why should
she wish to feign a love she did not feel? There was nothing she could
gain by deceit. But upon the heels of this slight hope came that
incontestable fact,--Williams. Dic could see her sitting with the
stranger as she had sat with himself at the step-off. Williams had been
coming for four months. She might be in his arms at that moment--the
hour was still early--before the old familiar fireplace, while the
family were in the kitchen. He could not endure the picture he had
conjured, so he rose from his bed, dressed, stole softly from the house,
and walked through the winter storm down the river to Bays's. Feeling
like a thief, he crept to the window. The night being cold, the fire had
not been banked, but threw its glow out into the room; and Dic's heart
leaped for joy when he saw the room was empty. At that same moment Rita
was in her own room, not twenty feet away from him, sobbing on her
pillow and wishing she were dead.
Dic's discovery of the empty room had no real significance, but it
seemed a good omen, and he went home and slept.
Rita did not sleep. She knew the first step had been taken to separate
her from Dic. She feared the separation was really effected. She had
offended this manly, patient lover so frequently that surely, she
thought, he would not forgive her this last and greatest insult. She
upbraided herself for having, through stupidity and cowardice, allowed
him to leave her. He had belonged to her for years; and the sweet
thought that she belonged to him, and that it was her God-given
privilege to give herself to him and to no other, pressed upon her
heart, and she cried out in the darkness: "I will not give him up! I
will not! If he will forgive me, I will fall upon my knees and beg him
to try me once again."
Christmas was a long, wretched day for Dic. What it was to Rita you may
easily surmise. Early after supper Dic walked over to see Sukey, and his
coming filled that young lady's ardent little soul with delight. His
reasons for going would be hard to define. Perhaps his chief motive was
the hope of running away from himself, and the possibility of hearing
another budget of unwelcome news concerning Rita and Williams. He
dreaded to hear it; but he longed to know all there was to be known, and
he felt sure Sukey had exhaustive knowledge on the subject, and would be
ready to impart it upon invitation.
He had been sitting with Sukey half an hour when Tom Bays walked in.
Thomas, of course, could not remain when he found the field occupied;
and much to Dic's regret and Sukey's delight he took his departure,
after a visit of ten minutes. Dic urged him to remain, saying that he
was going soon, and Sukey added, "Yes, won't you stay?" But she was far
from enthusiastic, and Thomas went home with disappointment in his heart
and profanity on his lips.
When Tom entered the room where Rita was doing her best to entertain
Williams, she said, "I thought you were going to see Sukey?"
"Dic's there," answered Tom, and Rita's white face grew whiter.
Tom started toward the back door on his way to the kitchen, where his
father and mother were sitting, and Rita said, pleadingly:--
"Don't go, Tom; stay here with us. Please do." She forgot Williams and
continued: "Please, brother. I don't ask much of you. This is a little
thing to do for me. Please stay here," but brother laughed and went to
the kitchen without so much as answering her.
When the door closed on Tom, Rita stood for a moment in front of the
fireplace, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep.
Williams approached her, overflowing with consolation, and placed his
hand caressingly upon her arm. She sprang from him as if she had been
stung, and cried out:--
"Don't put your hand on me! Don't touch me!" She stepped backward toward
the door leading upstairs to her room.
"Why, Rita," said Williams, "I did not intend anything wrong. I would
not offend you for all the world. You are nervous, Rita, and--and--"
"Don't call me Rita," she interrupted, sobbing. "I hate--I hate--" she
was going to say "I hate you," but said,--"the name."
He still approached her, though she had been retreating backward step by
step. He had no thought of touching her; but as he came toward her, she
lost self-control and almost screamed:--
"Don't touch me, I say! Don't touch me!" She had endured his presence
till she could bear it no longer, and the thought of Dic sitting with
Sukey had so wrought upon her that her self-control was exhausted.
Williams walked back to the fireplace, and Rita, opening the stair door,
hurriedly went to her room.
[Illustration: "COVERING HER FACE WITH HER HANDS, SHE BEGAN TO WEEP."]
She was not one in whom the baser sort of jealousy could exist; but the
thought of Dic, her Dic, sitting with Sukey, while she was compelled to
endure the presence of the man she had learned almost to hate, burned
her. Her jealousy did not take the form of hatred toward Sukey, and the
pain it brought her was chiefly because it confirmed her in the belief
that she had lost Dic. She did not doubt that Dic had loved her, and her
faith in that fact quickened her sense of loss. She blamed no one but
herself for the fact that he no longer loved her, and was seeking
another. Still, she was jealous, though even that unholy passion could
not be base in her.
Sukey smiled and dimpled at Dic for an hour or two with no appreciable
effect. He sat watching the fire, seeing none of her little love
signals, and went home quite as wretched as he had come. Evidently,
Sukey was the wrong remedy, though upon seeing her charms one would have
felt almost justified in warranting her,--no cure, no pay. Perhaps she
was a too-willing remedy: an overdose of even the right drug may
neutralize itself. As for myself, I love Dic better because his ailment
responded to no remedy.
Next day, Tom, without at all deserving it, won Rita's gratitude by
taking Williams out shooting.
After supper Rita said, "My head aches, and if I may be excused, I will
go to my room."
But her mother vetoed the proposition:--
"Your head does not ache, and you will stay downstairs. Your father and
I are going to church, and Mr. Williams will not want to be alone, will
you, Mr. Williams?"
"Indeed, I hope Miss Bays will keep me company," answered this
persistent, not-to-be-shaken-off suitor.
So Rita remained downstairs with Williams and listened to his apologies
for having offended her the night before. She felt contrite, and in turn
told him she was the one who should apologize, and said she hoped he
would forgive her. Her gentle heart could not bear to inflict pain even
upon this man who had brought so much suffering to her.
The next morning took Williams away, and Rita's thoughts were all
devoted to formulating a plan whereby she might see Dic and beg his
forgiveness after a fashion that would have been a revelation to
Williams.
Several days of furious storm ensued, during which our Rita, for the
first time in her life, was too ill to go abroad.
Mr. Bays had gone to Indianapolis with Williams, and returned on
Thursday's coach, having failed to raise the three thousand dollars. At
the supper table, on the evening of his return, Tom offered a
suggestion.
"I'll tell you where you can get most of the money," he said. "Dic has
twenty-six hundred dollars in Billy Little's box. He'll loan it to you."
"That's just the thing," cried Mrs. Bays, joyfully. "Tom, you are the
smartest boy on Blue. It took you to help us out." One would have
thought from her praise that Tom, and not Dic, was to furnish the money.
Addressing her husband, she continued:--
"You go over and see him this evening. If he won't loan it to us after
all we have done for him, he ought to be horsewhipped."
"What have we ever done for him?" asked Tom. The Chief Justice sought
for an answer. Failing to find a better one, she replied:--
"He's had five hundred meals in this house if he's had one."
"And he's given us five hundred deer and turkeys if he's given us one,"
answered Tom.
"Well, you know, Tom, just as well as I do, that we have always been
helping him. It is only your generous nature keeps you from saying so,"
responded Mrs. Bays. Tom laughed, and Tom, Sr., said:--
"I'll go over and see him this evening. I wonder where he has been? I
haven't seen him but once since he came home."
"Guess Williams scared him off," suggested Tom.
Rita tried in vain to think of some plan whereby she might warn Dic
against loaning the money, or prevent her father from asking it. After
supper Tom went to town while his father went up to see Dic.
When the after-supper work was finished, Mrs. Bays took her knitting and
sat before the fire in the front room. Rita, wishing to be alone,
remained in the kitchen, watching the fire die down and cuddling her
grief. She had been there but a few minutes when the outer door opened
and in walked Dic.
"I have come to ask you if you have forgotten me?" he said.
The girl answered with a cry of joy, and ran to him.
"Ah, Dic, I have forgotten all else. Forgive me. Forgive me," she
replied, and as the tears came, he drew her to his side.
"But, Rita--this man Williams?" he asked.
"I ... I know, Dic," she said between sobs, "I ... I know, but I
can't ... can't tell you now. Wait till I can speak. But I love you.
I ... can tell you that much. I will try to ... to explain when ... I
can talk."
"You need explain nothing," said Dic, soothingly. "I want only to know
that you have not forgotten me. I have suffered terribly these last few
days."
"I'm so glad," responded the sobbing girl, unconscious of her apparent
selfishness.
The kitchen fireplace was too small for a hearth log, so Dic and Rita
took chairs before the fire, and the girl, regardless of falling tears,
began her explanation.
"You see, it was this way, Dic," she sobbed. "He came with Uncle Jim,
and then he came again and again. I did not want him--I am sure you
know that I did not--but mother insisted, and I thought you would make
it all right when you returned. You know mother has heart trouble, and
any excitement may kill her. She is so--so--her will is so strong, and I
fear her and love her so much. She is my mother, and it is my duty to
obey her when--when I can. The time may come when I cannot obey her. It
has come, several times, and when I disobey her I suffer terribly and
always think how I would feel if she were to die."
Dic longed to enlighten her concerning the mother heart, but could not
find it in his heart to attack even his arch-enemy through Rita's
simple, unquestioning faith. That faith was a part of the girl's
transcendent perfection, and a good daughter would surely make a good
wife.
Rita continued her explanation: "He came many times to see me, and it
seems as though he grew to liking me. Then he asked me to marry him, but
I refused, Dic; I refused. I should have told him then that I had
promised to be your wife--" here she gave Dic her hand--"but I was
ashamed and--and, oh, I can't explain after all. I can't tell you how it
all happened. I thought I could; but I really do not myself understand
how it has all come about."
"You have not promised him?" asked Dic in alarm.
"Indeed, I have not, and I never shall. He has tried, with mother's
help, to force himself upon me, and I have been frightened almost to
death for fear he would succeed. Oh, take me now, Dic. Take me at once
and save me from him."
"I would, Rita, but you are not yet eighteen, and we must have the
consent of your parents before we can marry. That, you know, your mother
would refuse. When you are eighteen--but that will be almost a year from
now--I will take you home with me. Do not fear. Give me your love, and
trust to me for the rest."
"Now I feel safe," she cried, snatching up Dic's hand. "You are stronger
than mother. I saw that the evening before you left, when we were all on
the porch and you spoke up so bravely to her. You will meet her face to
face and beat down her will. I can't do it. I become helpless when she
attacks me. I am miserably weak. I sometimes hate myself and fear I
should not marry you. I know I shall not be able to make you a good
wife."
Dic expressed an entire willingness to take the risk. "But why did you
accept a ring from him?"
"I did not," responded Rita, with wide-open eyes. "He offered me a
diamond when he asked me to--to--but I refused it. I gave him back his
watch, too; but mother does not know I did. She would be angry. She
thinks the watch you gave me is the one he offered."
"Sukey Yates said you showed her his ring."
"Dic," returned Rita, firing up indignantly, "did Sukey tell you
that--that lie? I don't like to use the word, but, Dic, she lied. She
once saw your ring upon my finger, before I could hide it from her, but
I did not tell her who had given it to me. I told her nothing. I don't
believe she intended to tell a story. I am sorry I used the other word.
She probably thought that Mr.--Mr.--that man had given it to me." After
she had spoken, a shadowy little cloud came upon her face. "You were
over to see Sukey Christmas night," she said, looking very straight into
the fire.
"Yes," returned Dic. "How did you learn that I was there?"
"Tom told me," she answered. "And I cried right out before Mr.--Mr.--the
Boston man."
"Ah, did you?" asked Dic, leaning forward and taking her hand.
"Yes; and when he put his hand on my arm," she continued, very proud of
the spirit she had shown, "I just flew at him savagely. Oh, I can be
fierce when I wish. He will never touch me again, you may depend on it."
She then gave the details of the scene with Williams, dwelling proudly
upon the fact of her successful retreat to bed, and meekly telling of
what she called her jealousy and wickedness. She had asked forgiveness
of God, and now she would ask it of Dic, evidently believing that if God
and Dic would forgive her wicked jealousy, no one else had any right to
complain. She was justly proud of the manner in which she had
accomplished the retreat movement, and really felt that she was becoming
dare-devilish to a degree seldom, if ever, equalled by an undutiful
daughter.
"You don't know how wicked I can be," she said, in great earnestness.
"I know how good and beautiful you are," answered Dic. "I know you are
the one perfect human being in all the world--and it is useless for me
to try to tell you how much you are to me. When I am alone, I am better
able to realize what I feel, but I cannot speak it."
"Oh, Dic, is it really true?" asked the girl. "Neither can I tell
how--how--" but those emotions which cannot be spoken in words, owing to
the poverty of our language, must be expressed otherwise. God or Satan
taught the proper method to Adam and Eve, and it has come down to us by
patristic succession, so that we have it to-day in all its pristine
glory and expressiveness. Some have spoken against the time-honored
custom, and claim to mark its decadence. Connecticut forbade it by law
on Sundays, and frowned upon it "Fridays, Saturdays, and all"; but when
it dies, the Lord will whitewash this old earth and let it out as a moon
to shine upon happier worlds where the custom still lives.
Rita and Dic did not disturb Mrs. Bays, and she, unconscious of his
presence, did not disturb them until Mr. Bays returned.
When Mrs. Bays learned that Dic had been in the kitchen an hour, she
felt that the highest attribute of the human mind had been grossly
outraged. But her husband was about to ask a favor of Dic, and she
limited her expression of dissent to an exhibition of frigid, virtuous
dignity, worthy of the king's bench, or Judge Anselm Fisher himself.
When Bays came home, Dic and Rita went into the front room and took
their old places on the ciphering log. Mr. and Mrs. Bays sat on the
hearth before the fire. Mrs. Bays brought a chair and indicated by a
gesture that Rita should occupy it; but with Dic by her side that young
lady was brave and did not observe her mother's mute commands. Amid the
press of other matters in the kitchen, Rita had not remembered to warn
Dic not to lend her father the money. When that fluttering heart of hers
was in great trouble or joy, it was apt to be a forgetful little organ,
and regret in this instance followed forgetfulness. The regret came
after she was seated with Dic on the hearth log, and, being in her
mother's presence, dared not speak.
Mr. Bays was genuinely glad to see Dic, and listened with delight to the
narrative of his trip. When an opportunity arose, Tom, Sr., said:--
"I have a fine opportunity to go into business with Jim Fisher. I want
to borrow three thousand dollars, and I wonder if you will be willing to
lend me your money?"
"Yes," answered Dic, eagerly, "I am glad to lend it to you." He welcomed
the proposition as a blind man would welcome light. He was glad to help
his lifelong friend; but over and above that motive Mr. Bays's request
for money seemed to mean Rita. It certainly could mean nothing else; and
if the family moved to Indianapolis, it would mean Rita in the cosey
log-cabin up the river at once. Dic and his mother lived together, and,
even without Rita, the log house was a delightful home, warm in winter
and cool in summer; but the beautiful girl would transmute the log walls
to jasper, the hewed floors to beaten gold, and would create a paradise
on the banks of Blue. The thought almost made him dizzy. He had never
before felt so near to possessing her.
"Indeed I will," he repeated.
"I will pay you the highest rate of interest," said Mr. Bays.
"I want no interest, and you may repay the loan in one or ten years, as
you choose."
Rita, unable to repress her desire to speak, exclaimed: "Oh, Dic, please
don't," but Mrs. Bays gazed sternly over her glasses at her daughter and
suppressed the presumptuous, forward girl. The old lady, seeing Dic's
eagerness to lend the money, seized the opportunity to lessen her
obligation in the transaction and to make it appear that she was
conferring a favor upon Dic. If she and Mr. Bays would condescend to
borrow his money, she determined that Dic should fully appreciate the
honor they were doing him. Therefore, after a formulative pause, she
spoke to her daughter:--
"Mind your own affairs. Girls should be seen and not heard. Some girls
are seen altogether too much. Your father and Dic will arrange this
affair between themselves without your help. It is purely an affair of
business. Dic, of course, wishes to invest his money; and if your
father, after due consideration, is willing to help him, I am sure he
should feel obliged to us, and no doubt he will. He would be an
ungrateful person indeed if he did not. I am sure your father's note is
as good as the bank. He pays his just debts. He is my husband and could
not do otherwise. No man lives who has not at all times received his
dues from us to the last penny. If a penny is coming to us, we want it.
If we owe one, we pay it. My father, Judge Anselm Fisher, was the same
way. His maxim was, 'Justice to all and confusion to sinners.' He died
beholden to no man. Neither have I ever been beholden to any one. Dic is
fortunate, indeed, in finding so good an investment for his money, at
interest; very fortunate indeed."
"I don't want interest," said the too eager Dic.
"Indeed, that is generous in you," returned Mrs. Bays, though she was
determined that Dic should not succeed in casting the burden of an
obligation upon her shoulders. "But of course you know your money will
be safe, and that is a great deal in these days of weak banks and
robbers. If I were in Mr. Bays's place, I should pause and consider the
matter carefully and prayerfully before assuming responsibility for
anybody's money. If it should be stolen from him, he, and not you, would
lose it. I think it is very kind in him to undertake the
responsibility."
That phase of the question slightly dimmed its rosiness; but Dic still
hoped that lending the money would make smoother his path to Rita. At
first he had not foreseen that he, and not the Bayses, would rest under
an obligation. To the girl the lending of this money meant Indianapolis,
Williams, and separation from Dic.
THE TOURNAMENT