SAPPHIRA TENNANT
(formerly Dolly Tennant).
But Mr. Hemingway refused to touch the reward, and Miss Tennant remained
in his debt for the full amount of her loan. She began at once to save
what she could from her allowance. And she called this fund her
"conscience money."
Miss Tennant and David Larkin did not meet again until the moment of the
latter's departure from Aiken. And she was only one of a number who
drove to the station to see him off. Possibly to guard against his
impulsive nature, she remained in her runabout during the brief
farewell. And what they said to each other might have been (and probably
was) heard by others.
Aiken felt that it had misjudged Larkin, and he departed in high favor.
He had paid what he owed, so Aiken confessed to having misjudged his
resources. He had suddenly stopped short in all evil ways, so Aiken
confessed to having misjudged his strength of character. He had
announced that he was going out West to seek the bubble wealth in the
mouth of an Idaho apple valley, so Aiken cheered him on and wished him
well. And when Aiken beheld the calmness of his farewells to Miss
Tennant, Aiken said: "And he seems to have gotten over that."
But Larkin had done nothing of the kind, and he said to himself, as he
lay feverish and restless in a stuffy upper berth: "It isn't because
she's so beautiful or so kind; it's because she always speaks the truth.
Most girls lie about everything, not in so many words, perhaps, but in
fact. She doesn't. She lets you know what she thinks, and where you
stand ... and I didn't stand very high."
Despair seized him. How is it possible to go into a strange world, with
only nine hundred dollars in your pocket, and carve a fortune? "When can
I pay her back? What must I do if I fail?..." Then came thoughts that
were as grains of comfort. Was her lending him money philanthropy pure
and simple, an act emanating from her love of mankind? Was it not rather
an act emanating from affection for a particular man? If so, that
man--misguided boy, bird tumbled out of the nest, child that had escaped
from its nurse--was not hard to find. "I could lay my finger on him,"
thought Larkin, and he did so--five fingers, somewhat grandiosely upon
the chest. A gas lamp peered at him over the curtain pole; snores shook
the imprisoned atmosphere of the car. And Larkin's thoughts flitted from
the past and future to the present.
A question that he now asked himself was: "Do women snore?" And: "If
people cannot travel in drawing-rooms, why do they travel at all?" The
safety of his nine hundred dollars worried him; he knelt up to look in
the inside pocket of his jacket, and bumped his head, a dull, solid
bump. Pale golden stars, shaped like the enlarged pictures of
snow-flakes, streamed across his consciousness. But the money was safe.
Already his nostrils were irritable with cinders; he attempted to blow
them clear, and failed. He was terribly thirsty. He wished very much to
smoke. Whichever way he turned, the frogs on the uppers of his pajamas
made painful holes in him. He woke at last with two coarse blankets
wrapped firmly about his head and shoulders and the rest of him
half-naked, gritty with cinders, and as cold as a well curb. Through the
ventilators (tightly closed) daylight was struggling with gas-light. The
car smelled of stale steam and man. The car wheels played a headachy
tune to the metre of the Phoebe-Snow-upon-the-road-of-anthracite
verses. David cursed Phoebe Snow, and determined that if ever God
vouchsafed him a honey-moon it should be upon the clean, fresh ocean.
There had been wistaria in Aiken. There was snow in New York. There was
a hurricane in Chicago. But in the smoker bound West there was a fine
old gentleman in a blue-serge suit and white spats who took a fancy to
David, just when David had about come to the conclusion that nothing in
the world looked friendly except suicide.
If David had learned nothing else from Miss Tennant, he had learned to
speak the truth. "Any employer that I am ever to have," he resolved,
"shall know all that there is to be known about me. I shall not try to
create the usual impression of a young man seeking his fortune in the
West purely for amusement." And so, when the preliminaries of
smoking-room acquaintance had been made--the cigar offered and refused,
and one's reasons for or against smoking plainly stated--David was
offered (and accepted) the opportunity to tell the story of his life.
David shook his head at a brilliantly labelled cigar eight inches long.
"I love to smoke," he said, "but I've promised not to."
"Better habit than liquor," suggested the old gentleman in the white
spats.
"I've promised not to drink."
"Men who don't smoke and who don't drink," said the old gentleman,
"usually spend their time running after the girls. My name is Uriah
Grey."
"Mine is David Larkin," said David, and he smiled cheerfully, "and I've
promised not to make love."
"What--never?" exclaimed Mr. Grey.
"Not until I have a right to," said David.
Mr. Grey drew three brightly bound volumes from between his leg and the
arm of his chair, and intimated that he was about to make them a subject
of remark.
"I love stories," he said, "and in the hope of a story I paid a dollar
and a half for each of three novels. This one tells you how to prepare
rotten meat for the market. This one tells you when and where to find
your neighbor's wife without being caught. And in this one a noble young
Chicagoan describes the life of society persons in the effete East."
"Whom he does not know from Adam," said David.
"Whom he does not distinguish from Adam," corrected Mr. Grey. "But I was
thinking that I am disappointed in my appetite for stories, and that
just now you made a most enticing beginning as--'I, Roger Slyweather of
Slyweather Hall, Blankshire, England, having at the age of twenty-two or
thereabouts made solemn promise neither to smoke nor to drink, nor to
make love, did set forth upon a blustering day in April....'"
"Oh," said David, "if it's my story you want, I don't mind a bit. It
will chasten me to tell it, and you can stop me the minute you are
bored."
And then, slip by slip and bet by bet, he told his story, withholding
only the sex of that dear friend who had loaned him the five thousand
dollars, and to whom he had bound himself by promises.
"Well," said Mr. Grey, when David had finished, "I don't know your
holding-out powers, Larkin, but you do certainly speak the truth without
mincing."
"That," said David, "is a promise I have made to myself in admiration of
and emulation of my friend. But I have had my little lesson, and I shall
keep the other promises until I have made good."
"And then?" Mr. Grey beamed.
"Then," said David, "I shall smoke and I shall make love."
"But no liquor."
David laughed.
"I have a secret clause in my pledge," said he; "it is not to touch
liquor except on the personal invitation of my future father-in-law,
whoever he may be." But he had Dolly Tennant's father in his mind, and
the joke seemed good to him.
"Well," said Mr. Grey, "I don't know as I'd go into apple-growing. You
haven't got enough capital."
"But," said David, "I intend to begin at the bottom and work up."
"When I was a youngster," said Mr. Grey, "I began at the bottom of an
apple tree and worked my way to the top. There I found a wasp's nest.
Then I fell and broke both arms. That was a lesson to me. Don't go up
for your pile, my boy. Go down. Go down into the beautiful earth, and
take out the precious metals."
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed David; "you're _the_ Mr. Grey of Denver."
"I have a car hitched on to this train," said the magnate; "I'd be very
glad of your company at dinner--seven-thirty. It's not every young man
that I'd invite. But seeing that you're under bond not to make love
until you've made good, I can see no objection to introducing you to my
granddaughter."
"Grandpa," said Miss Violet Grey, who was sixteen, spoiled, and
exquisite, "make that poor boy stop off at Denver, and do something for
him."
"Since when," said her grandfather, "have you been so down on apples,
miss?"
"Oh," said she with an approving shudder, "all good women fear
them--like so much poison."
"But," said Mr. Grey (Mr. "Iron Grey," some called him), "if I take this
young fellow up, it won't be to put him down in a drawing-room, but in a
hole a thousand feet deep, or thereabouts."
"And when he comes out," said she, "I shall have returned from being
finished in Europe."
"Don't know what there is so attractive about these young Eastern
ne'er-do-weels," said the old gentleman, "but this one has got a certain
something...."
"It's his inimitable truthfulness," said she.
"Not to me," said her grandfather, "so much as the way he says _w_
instead of _r_ and at the same time gives the impression of having the
makings of a man in him...."
"Oh," she said, "make him, grandpa, do!"
"And if I make him?" The old gentleman smiled provokingly.
"Why," said she, "then I'll break him."
"Or," said her grandfather, who was used to her sudden fancies and
subsequent disenchantments, "or else you'll shake him."
Then he pulled her ears for her and sent her to bed.
In one matter David was, from the beginning of his new career, firmly
resolved. He would in no case write Miss Tennant of his hopes and fears.
If he was to be promoted she was not to hear of it until after the fact;
and she should not be troubled with the sordid details of his
savings-bank account. As to fears, very great at first, these dwindled,
became atrophied, and were consumed in the fire of work from the moment
when that work changed from a daily nuisance to a daily miracle, at once
the exercise and the reward of intelligence. His work, really light at
first, seemed stupendous to him because he did not understand it. As
his understanding grew, he was given heavier work, and behold! it seemed
more light. He discovered that great books had been written upon every
phase of bringing forth metal from the great mother earth; and he
snatched from long days of toil time for more toil, and burned his lamp
into the night, so that he might add theory to practice.
I should like to say that David's swift upward career owed thanks
entirely to his own good habits, newly discovered gifts for mining
engineering, and industry; but a strict regard for the truth prevents.
Upon his own resources and talents he must have succeeded in the end;
but his success was the swifter for the interest, and presently
affection, that Uriah Grey himself contributed toward it. In short,
David's chances came to him as soon as he was strong enough to handle
them, and were even created on purpose for him; whereas, if he had had
no one behind him, he must have had to wait interminably for them. But
the main point, of course, is that, as soon as he began to understand
what was required of him, he began to make good.
His field work ended about the time that Miss Violet Grey returned from
Europe "completely finished and done up," as she put it herself, and he
became a fixture of growing importance in Mr. Grey's main offices in
Denver and a thrill in Denver society. His baby _w_'s instead of rolling
_r_'s thrilled the ladies; his good habits coupled with his manliness
and success thrilled the men.
"He doesn't drink," said one.
"He doesn't smoke," said another.
"He doesn't bet," said a third.
"He can look the saints in the face," said a fourth; and a fifth,
looking up, thumped upon a bell that would summon a waiter, and with
emphasis said:
"And we _like_ to have him around!"
Among the youngest and most enthusiastic men it even became the habit to
copy David in certain things. He was responsible for a small wave of
reform in Denver, as he had once been in Aiken; but for the opposite
cause. Little dialogues like the following might frequently be heard in
the clubs:
"Have a drink, Billy?"
"Thanks; I don't drink."
"Cigar, Sam?"
"Thanks (with a moan); don't smoke."
"Betcherfivedollars, Ned."
"Sorry, old man; I don't bet."
Or, in a lowered voice:
"Say, let's drop round to----"
"I've (chillingly) cut out all that sort of thing."
Platonic friendships became the rage. David himself, as leader,
maintained a dozen such, chiefest of which was with the newly finished
Miss Grey. At first her very soul revolted against a friendship of this
sort. She was lovely, and she knew it; with lovely clothes she made
herself even lovelier, and she knew this, too. She was young, and she
rejoiced in it. And she had always been a spoiled darling, and she
wished to be made much of, to cause a dozen hearts to beat in the breast
where but one beat before, to be followed, waited on, adored, bowed down
to, and worshipped. She wished yellow-flowering jealousy to sprout in
David's heart instead of the calm and loyal friendliness to which alone
the soil seemed adapted. She knew that he often wrote letters to a Miss
Tennant; and she would have liked very much to have this Miss Tennant in
her power, and to have scalped her there and then.
This was only at first, when she merely fancied David rather more than
other young men. But a time came when her fancy was stronger for him
than that; and then it seemed to her that even his platonic friendship
was worth more than all the great passions of history rolled into one.
Then from the character of that spoiled young lady were wiped clean
away, as the sponge wipes marks from a slate, vanity, whims, temper,
tantrums, thoughtlessness, and arrogance, and in their places appeared
the opposites. She sought out hard spots in people's lives and made them
soft; sympathy and gentleness radiated from her; thoughtfulness and
steadfastness.
Her grandfather, who had been reading Ibsen, remarked to himself: "It
may be artistically and dramatically inexcusable for the ingénue
suddenly to become the heroine--but _I_ like it. As to the cause----"
and the old gentleman rested in his deep chair till far into the night,
twiddling his thumbs and thinking long thoughts. Finally, frowning and
troubled, he rose and went off to his bed.
"Is it," thought he, "because he gave his word not to make love until he
had made good--or is it because he really doesn't give a damn about poor
little Vi? If it's the first reason, why he's absolved from that
promise, because he has made good, and every day he's making better. But
if it's the second reason, why then this world is a wicked, dreary
place. Poor little Vi--poor little Vi ... only two things in the whole
universe that she can't get--the moon, and David--the moon, and
David----"
About noon the next day, David requested speech with his chief.
"Well?" said Uriah. The old man looked worn and feeble. He had had a
sorrowful night.
"I haven't had a vacation in a year," said David. "Will you give me
three weeks, sir?"
"Want to go back East and pay off your obligations?"
David nodded.
"I have the money and interest in hand," said he.
Mr. Grey smiled.
"I suppose you'll come back smoking like a chimney, drinking like a
fish, betting like a book-maker, and keeping a whole chorus in
picture-hats."
"I think I'll not even smoke," said David. "About a month ago the last
traces of hankering left me, and I feel like a free man at last."
"But you'll be making love right and left," said Mr. Grey cheerfully,
but with a shrewd eye upon the young man's expression of face.
David looked grave and troubled. He appeared to be turning over
difficult matters in his mind. Then he smiled gayly.
"At least I shall be free to make love if I want to."
"Nonsense," said Mr. Grey. "People don't make love because they want to.
They do it because they have to."
Again David looked troubled, and a little sad, perhaps.
"True," said he. And he walked meditatively back to his own desk, took
up a pen, meditated for a long time, and then wrote:
Best friend that any man ever had in the world! I shall be in
Aiken on the twenty-fifth, bringing with me that which I owe, and
can pay, and deeply conscious of that deeper debt that I owe, but
never can hope to pay. But I will do what I can. I will not now
take back the promises I gave, unless you wish; I will not do
anything that you do not wish. And if all the service and devotion
that is in me for the rest of time seem worth having to you, they
are yours. But you know that.