It wasn't from shame that G. G. signed another name than his own to the
stories that he was making at the rate of one every two months. He
judged calmly and dispassionately that they were "going to be pretty
good some day," and that it would never be necessary for him to live in
a city. He signed his stories with an assumed name because he was full
of dramatic instinct. He wanted to be able--just the minute he was
well--to say to Cynthia:
"Let us be married!" Then she was to say: "Of course, G. G.; but what
are we going to live on?" And G. G. was going to say: "Ever hear of
so-and-so?"
CYNTHIA: Goodness gracious! Sakes alive! Yes; I should think I had! And,
except for you, darlingest G. G., I think he's the very greatest man in
all the world!
G. G.: Goosey-Gander, know that he and I are one and the same
person--and that we've saved seventeen hundred dollars to get married
on!
(Tableau not to be seen by the audience.)
So far as keeping Cynthia and his father and mother in ignorance of the
fledgling wings he was beginning to flap, G. G. succeeded admirably; but
it might have been better to have told them all in the beginning.
Now G. G.'s seventeen hundred dollars was a huge myth. He was writing
short stories at the rate of six a year and he had picked out to do
business with one of the most dignified magazines in the world.
Dignified people do not squander money. The magazine in question paid G.
G. from sixty to seventy dollars apiece for his stories and was much too
dignified to inform him that plenty of other magazines--very frivolous
and not in the least dignified--would have been ashamed to pay so little
for anything but the poems, which all magazines use to fill up blank
spaces. So, even in his own ambitious and courageous mind, a "married
living" seemed a very long way off.
He refused to be discouraged, however. His health was too good for that.
The doctor pointed to him with pride as a patient who followed
instructions to the letter and was not going to die of the disease which
had brought him to Saranac. And they wrote to G. G's father--who was
finding life very expensive--that, if he could keep G. G. at Saranac, or
almost anywhere out of New York, for another year or two, they
guaranteed--as much as human doctors can--that G. G. would then be as
sound as a bell and fit to live anywhere.
This pronouncement was altogether too much of a good thing for Fate. As
G. G's father walked up-town from his office, Fate raised a dust in his
face which, in addition to the usual ingredients of city dust, contained
at least one thoroughly compatible pair of pneumonia germs. These went
for their honey-moon on a pleasant, warm journey up G. G's father's left
nostril and to house-keeping in his lungs. In a few hours they raised a
family of several hundred thousand bouncing baby germs; and these grew
up in a few minutes and began to set up establishments of their own
right and left.
G. G.'s father admitted that he had a "heavy cold on the chest." It was
such a heavy cold that he became delirious, and doctors came and sent
for nurses; and there was laid in the home of G. G.'s father the
corner-stone of a large edifice of financial disaster.
He had never had a partner. His practice came to a dead halt. The
doctors whom G. G.'s mother called in were, of course, the best she had
ever heard of. They would have been leaders of society if their persons
had been as fashionable as their prices. The corner drug store made its
modest little profit of three or four hundred per cent on the drugs
which were telephoned for daily. The day nurse rolled up twenty-five
dollars a week and the night nurse thirty-five. The servant's wages
continued as usual. The price of beef, eggs, vegetables, etc., rose. The
interest on the mortgage fell due. And it is a wonder, considering how
much he worried, that G. G.'s father ever lived to face his obligations.
Cynthia, meanwhile, having heard that G. G. was surely going to get
well, was so happy that she couldn't contain the news. And she proceeded
to divulge it to her father.
"Papa," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that years ago, at
Saranac--that Christmas when I went up with the Andersons--I met the
man that I am going to marry. He was a boy then; but now we're both
grown up and we feel just the same about each other."
And she told her father G. G.'s name and that he had been very delicate,
but that he was surely going to get well. Cynthia's father, who had
always given her everything she asked for until now, was not at all
enthusiastic.
"I can't prevent your marrying any one you determine to marry, Cynthia,"
he said. "Can this young man support a wife?"
"How could he!" she exclaimed--"living at Saranac and not being able to
work, and not having any money to begin with! But surely, if the way
_we_ live is any criterion, you could spare us some money--couldn't
you?"
"You wish me to say that I will support a delicate son-in-law whom I
have never seen? Consult your intelligence, Cynthia."
"I have my allowance," she said, her lips curling.
"Yes," said her father, "while you live at home and do as you're told."
"Now, papa, don't tell me that you're going to behave like a lugubrious
parent in a novel! Don't tell me that you are going to cut me off with a
shilling!"
"I shan't do that," he said gravely; "it will be without a shilling."
But he tempered this savage statement with a faint smile.
"Papa, dear, is this quite definite? Are you talking in your right mind
and do you really mean what you say?"
"Suppose you talk the matter over with your mother--she's always
indulged you in every way. See what she says."
It developed that neither of Cynthia's parents was enthusiastic at the
prospect of her marrying a nameless young man--she had told them his
name, but that was all she got for her pains--who hadn't a penny and who
had had consumption, and might or might not be sound again. Personally
they did not believe that consumption can be cured. It can be arrested
for a time, they admitted, but it always comes back. Cynthia's mother
even made a physiological attack on Cynthia's understanding, with the
result that Cynthia turned indignantly pink and left the room, saying:
"If the doctor thinks it's perfectly right and proper for us to marry I
don't see the least point in listening to the opinions of excited and
prejudiced amateurs."
The ultimatum that she had from her parents was distinct, final, and
painful.
"Marry him if you like. We will neither forgive you nor support you."
They were perfectly calm with her--cool, affectionate, sensible, and
worldly, as it is right and proper for parents to be. She told them they
were wrong-headed, old-fashioned, and unintelligent; but as long as they
hadn't made scenes and talked loud she found that she couldn't help
loving them almost as much as she always had; but she loved G. G. very
much more. And having definitely decided to defy her family, to marry G.
G. and live happily ever afterward, she consulted her check-book and
discovered that her available munition of war was something less than
five hundred dollars--most of it owed to her dress-maker.
"Well, well!" she said; "she's always had plenty of money from me; she
can afford to wait."
And Cynthia wrote to her dress-maker, who was also her friend!
MY DEAR CELESTE: I have decided that you will have to afford to
wait for your money. I have an enterprise in view which calls for
all the available capital I have. Please write me a nice note and
say that you don't mind a bit. Otherwise we shall stop being
friends and I shall always get my clothes from somebody else. Let
me know when the new models come....
V
On her way down-town Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the
whole household in the throes occasioned by its head's pneumonia.
"Why haven't you let me know?" exclaimed Cynthia. "There must be so
many little things that I could have done to help you."
Though the sick man couldn't have heard them if they had shouted, the
two women talked in whispers, with their heads very close together.
"He's better," said G. G.'s mother, "but yesterday they wanted me to
send for G. G. 'No,' I said. 'You may have given him up, but I haven't.
If I send for my boy it would look as if I had surrendered,' And almost
at once, if you'll believe it, he seemed to shake off something that was
trying to strangle him and took a turn for the better; and now they say
that, barring some long names, he will get well.... It does look, my
dear, as if death had seen that there was no use facing a thoroughly
determined woman."
At this point, because she was very much overwrought, G. G.'s mother had
a mild little attack of hysteria; and Cynthia beat her on the back and
shook her and kissed her until she was over it. Then G. G.'s mother told
Cynthia about her financial troubles.
"It isn't us that matters," she said, "but that G. G. ought to have one
more year in a first-rate climate; and it isn't going to be possible to
give it to him. They say that he's well, my dear, absolutely well; but
that now he should have a chance to build up and become strong and
heavy, so that he can do a man's work in the world. As it is, we shall
have to take him home to live; and you know what New York dust and
climate can do to people who have been very, very ill and are still
delicate and high-strung."
"There's only one thing to do for the present," said Cynthia--"anybody
with the least notion of business knows that--we must keep him at
Saranac just as long as our credit holds out, mustn't we?--until the
woman where he boards begins to act ugly and threatens to turn him out
in the snow."
"Oh, but that would be dreadful!" said G. G.'s mother. Cynthia smiled in
a superior way.
"I don't believe," she said, "that you understand the first thing about
business. Even my father, who is a prude about bills, says that all the
business of the country is done on credit.... Now you're not going to be
silly, are you?--and make G. G. come to New York before he has to?"
"It will have to be pretty soon, I'm afraid," said G. G.'s mother.
"Sooner than run such risks with any boy of mine," said Cynthia, with a
high color, "I'd beg, I'd borrow, I'd forge, I'd lie--I'd steal!"
"Don't I know you would!" exclaimed G. G.'s mother. "My darling girl,
you've got the noblest character--it's just shining in your eyes!"
"There's another thing," said Cynthia: "I have to go down-town now on
business, but you must telephone me around five o'clock and tell me how
G. G.'s father is. And you must spend all your time between now and then
trying to think up something really useful that I can do to help you.
And"--here Cynthia became very mysterious--"I forbid you to worry about
money until I tell you to!"
Cynthia had a cousin in Wall Street; his name was Jarrocks Bell. He was
twenty years older than Cynthia and he had been fond of her ever since
she was born. He was a great, big, good-looking man, gruff without and
tender within. Clever people, who hadn't made successful brokers,
wondered how in the face of what they called his "obvious stupidity"
Jarrocks Bell had managed to grow rich in Wall Street. The answer was
obvious enough to any one who knew him intimately. To begin with, his
stupidity was superficial. In the second place, he had studied bonds and
stocks until he knew a great deal about them. Then, though a drinking
man, he had a head like iron and was never moved by exhilaration to
mention his own or anybody else's affairs. Furthermore, he was
unscrupulously honest. He was so honest and blunt that people thought
him brutal at times. Last and not least among the elements of his
success was the fact that he himself never speculated.
When the big men found out that there was in Wall Street a broker who
didn't speculate himself, who didn't drink to excess, who was absolutely
honest, and who never opened his mouth when it was better shut, they
began to patronize that man's firm. In short, the moment Jarrocks Bell's
qualities were discovered, Jarrocks Bell was made. So that now, in
speculative years, his profits were enormous.
Cynthia had always been fond of her big, blunt cousin, as he of her; and
in her present trouble her thoughts flew to him as straight as a homing
aeroplane to the landing-stage.
Even a respectable broker's office is a noisome, embarrassing place, and
among the clients are men whose eyes have become popped from staring at
paper-tapes and pretty girls; but Cynthia had no more fear of men than a
farmer's daughter has of cows, and she flashed through Jarrocks's outer
office--preceded by a very small boy--with her color unchanged and only
her head a little higher than usual.
Jarrocks must have wondered to the point of vulgar curiosity what the
deuce had brought Cynthia to see him in the busiest hour of a very busy
day; but he said "Hello, Cynthia!" as naturally as if they two had been
visiting in the same house and he had come face to face with her for the
third or fourth time that morning.
"I suppose," said Cynthia, "that you are dreadfully busy; but, Jarrocks
dear, my affairs are so much more important to me than yours can
possibly be to you--do you mind?"
"May I smoke?"
"Of course."
"Then I don't mind. What's your affair, Cynthia--money or the heart?"
"Both, Jarrocks." And she told him pretty much what the reader has
already learned. As for Jarrocks's listening, he was a perfect study of
himself. He laughed gruffly when he ought to have cried; and when
Cynthia tried to be a little humorous he looked very solemn and not
unlike the big bronze Buddha of the Japanese. Inside, however, his big
heart was full of compassion and tenderness for his favorite girl in all
the world. Nobody will ever know just how fond Jarrocks was of Cynthia.
It was one of those matters on which--owing, perhaps, to his being her
senior by twenty years--he had always thought it best to keep his mouth
shut.
"What's your plan?" he asked. "Where do I come in? I'll give you
anything I've got." Cynthia waived the offer; it was a little unwelcome.
"I've got about five hundred dollars," she said, "and I want to
speculate with it and make a lot of money, so that I can be independent
of papa and mamma."
"Lots of people," said Jarrocks, "come to Wall Street with five hundred
dollars, more or less, and they wish to be independent of papa and
mamma. They end up by going to live in the Mills Hotel."
"I know," said Cynthia; "but this is really important. If G. G. could
work it would be different."
"Tell me one thing," said Jarrocks: "If you weren't in love with G. G.
what would you think of him as a candidate for your very best friend's
hand?"
Cynthia counted ten before answering.
"Jarrocks, dear," she said--and he turned away from the meltingness of
her lovely face--"he's so pure, he's so straight, he's so gentle and so
brave, that I don't really think I can tell you what I think of him."
There was silence for a moment, then Jarrocks said gruffly:
"That's a clean-enough bill of health. Guess you can bring him into the
family, Cynthia."
Then he drummed with his thick, stubby fingers on the arm of his chair.
"The idea," he said at last, "is to turn five hundred dollars into a
fortune. You know I don't speculate."
"But you make it easy for other people?"
He nodded.
"If you'd come a year ago," he said, "I'd have sent you away. Just at
the present moment your proposition isn't the darn-fool thing it
sounds."
"I knew you'd agree with me," said Cynthia complacently. "I knew you'd
put me into something that was going 'way up."
Jarrocks snorted.
"Prices are at about the highest level they've ever struck and money was
never more expensive. I think we're going to see such a tumble in values
as was never seen before. It almost tempts me to come out of my shell
and take a flyer--if I lose your five hundred for you, you won't squeal,
Cynthia?"
"Of course not."
"Then I'll tell you what I think. There's nothing certain in this
business, but if ever there was a chance to turn five hundred dollars
into big money it's now. You've entered Wall Street, Cynthia, at what
looks to me like the psychological moment."
"That's a good omen," said Cynthia. "I believe we shall succeed. And I
leave everything to you."
Then she wrote him a check for all the money she had in the world. He
held it between his thumb and forefinger while the ink dried.
"By the way, Cynthia," he said, "do you want the account to stand in
your own name?"
She thought a moment, then laughed and told him to put it in the name of
G. G.'s mother. "But you must report to me how things go," she said.
Jarrocks called a clerk and gave him an order to sell something or
other. In three minutes the clerk reported that "it"--just some letter
of the alphabet--had been sold at such and such a price.
For another five minutes Jarrocks denied himself to all visitors. Then
he called for another report on the stock which he had just caused to be
sold. It was selling "off a half."
"Well, Cynthia," said Jarrocks, "you're fifty dollars richer than when
you came. Now I've got to tell you to go. I'll look out for your
interests as if they were my own."
And Jarrocks, looking rather stupid and bored, conducted Cynthia through
his outer offices and put her into an elevator "going down." Her face
vanished and his heart continued to mumble and grumble, just the way a
tooth does when it is getting ready to ache.
Cynthia had entered Wall Street at an auspicious moment. Stocks were at
that high level from which they presently tumbled to the panic
quotations of nineteen-seven. And Jarrocks, whom the unsuccessful
thought so very stupid, had made a very shrewd guess as to what was
going to happen.
Two weeks later he wrote Cynthia that if she could use two or three
thousand dollars she could have them, without troubling her balance very
perceptibly.
"I thought you had a chance," he wrote. "I'm beginning to think it's a
sure thing! Keep a stiff upper lip and first thing you know you'll have
the laugh on mamma and papa. Give 'em my best regards."