DAN reassured his mother as well as he could. “Only a fit of
nerves;—too much music, I guess,” he said; and, returning to his son’s
door, found it locked and Henry as unresponsive as the door. The father
knocked repeatedly but not loudly, demanding admittance and obtaining
the response of a profound silence. Then, as he heard Mrs. Oliphant
slowly ascending the stairs to her belated bed, he decided to keep out
of her way until he had better composed himself, and, retiring to his
own room, discovered that his teeth were chattering.
He removed his cold and sodden garments; but his bed seemed as cold as
his clothes; so he got up, put a dressing-gown over his pajamas, and
again tried to sleep. The bed still seemed cold—so cold that his teeth
still showed the disposition to chatter. However, he told himself that
he had “more to worry about than a little chill”; and, between the chill
and his more important worries, slept but fitfully. He was warm when the
drizzly morning came—too warm—and, again communing with himself on the
subject of his physical annoyances, philosophically dismissed the fever
as unworthy of his attention. “A little temperature’s perfectly natural
after a chill,” he thought. “It’ll pass off, and I’ve got other things
to think about _this_ day!”
So, descending early to the dining-room he had a cup of strong coffee,
and left the house without having seen anybody except the cook and his
chauffeur. The interview with his son was postponed until evening;—Dan
felt he would be better fitted to speak with authority after he had
beaten the shellbacks and had shown the First National, with the help of
the Kohns and some others, that it wouldn’t do to “call” him.
He had a hard day of it; the shells of the shellbacks were tough and
seasoned casings, tough as old hickory, and about as penetrable to mere
argument. The morning began ominously, and the afternoon came to a
close, in the office of Sam Kohn, Junior, in something not far from
complete disaster; though Sam insisted, when he and Dan were finally
left alone together there, that it was not complete.
“No, sir!” he said. “The way you got a perfect right to look at it, it
ain’t near as bad as it might been. Maybe from one angle you can say you
come out the little end of the horn, but from another angle, you
certainly did come _out_, you might say. You got to look at it from this
angle, Dan: you _might_ been sittin’ there stone cold broke right now. I
tell you last night late, when I talked it over with the old man after
you’d gone, I was mighty scared it was goin’ to be bankruptcy—but it’s
a lot better than that. _Ain’t_ it better’n that, Dan?”
Dan looked up without altering the despondent attitude into which he had
fallen, as he sat in one of his friend’s mahogany office chairs. “Yes; I
guess it could have been a good deal worse. The only trouble is——” He
took a deep and laboured breath, then laughed plaintively. “The only
trouble is, while it might have been worse, I wasn’t hardly prepared for
its bein’ so bad!”
“But it ain’t so _blame_ bad, Dan.”
“No; I thought when I showed ’em what I had to fall back on they’d see
they couldn’t afford to call. I thought I could show ’em it would be so
profitable to tide me over and let me renew that they’d see it was the
best policy. They _ought_ to have seen it, too!”
Agreeing with this, Sam swore heartily, then he added, “Them old
hardshells! The worst about ’em is they got their business training when
everything was on the small scale, and they don’t know what a liberal
policy means. You take that old Shelby, for instance, he was raised on
such a stingy scale he thinks everybody’s a gambler that borrows a
nickel on a million-dollar bond! He’s got one foot in the grave and he’s
so shrunk it takes two people to see him, but, by golly, he wants to get
his hands on everything! They’re a tough bunch, Dan, and I’m glad you
got away from ’em alive. Because you still _are_ alive. Anyhow you’re
_that_ much!”
Dan shook his head. “Just barely, I guess. If it had been that Broadwood
hard luck by itself, I’d have pulled out o’ the hole. If that hadn’t
come just at the same time our sales smashed with the Four——”
“That’s exactly the way bad things do come, though,” Sam interrupted,
and went on to expound the philosophy of misfortune. “They come
together, because that’s what makes ’em bad. It’s the comin’ together of
bad things that makes all the trouble there is. If they’d come one at a
time a person wouldn’t mind ’em so much. The angle I look at it, if a
person goes along all right for a good while it’s only because a whole
lot of bad things are holdin’ off on him. That makes ’em bound to come
together when they do come. It never rains but it pours, Dan, as it
were. That’s why, when such things happen, we got to put up the best
umbrella a feller can lay his hands on.”
Dan did not seem to have heard him. “I _could_ stand havin’ to sign over
the Four to ’em, Sam,” he said. “I’d like to have kept it in my hands,
but I could _stand_ havin’ ’em take it. But when I think I had to sit
here and sign over _Ornaby_——” Suddenly he uttered a broken sound,
like a groan; and his whole face became corrugated with a distortion
that took more than a moment to conquer. “Why, I’ve just given my life’s
blood to Ornaby, and now——”
“Now?” Sam said testily. “Well, what’s the matter with now? Didn’t we
force ’em to agree to turn you over some stock in it when they get the
organization made? You ain’t out of Ornaby, are you? Not entirely, by no
means!”
“It’s not mine,” Dan said. “It’s not mine any longer. Nothin’s mine any
longer!”
His friend affected an angry impatience. “Don’t sit there and talk like
that to a person that knows something! If you’d had to make the kind of
assignment you _might_ had to, you’d be where it would be pretty hard
for you to come back. Ain’t you goin’ to try to come back?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Dan said. “I’m just as sure to come back
as I am to go out of that door!” He laughed rather shakily, as he rose
to go. “Why, a few years from now—less’n that!—why, by this time next
_year_ if I don’t get Ornaby back I’ll make a new Ornaby—I’ll find it
somewhere, and this town won’t take long to grow out to it, the way it’s
started now. Don’t you ever worry about my comin’ back!”
“That’s the ticket!” his friend cried. “That’s the way you used to talk.
You go home and get a good rest—you certainly been through a rough day,
and you look like it!—and then you get up to-morrow morning and start
to come back!”
“That’s the programme I’ve mapped out, Sammy. I guess you’re right about
my gettin’ on home, too. I don’t feel just the freshest in the world.”
“Wait a minute,” the other said. “I want to make certain about one
thing. You told me I mustn’t go near your brother, and my tacklin’ him
the way I did this morning behind your back—well, I never liked the
cold-blooded silk-stocking upstart, but he _did_ show he’s a gentleman.
I been afraid——” He hesitated, somewhat confused. “Well, I know how it
is in families, when one of a family don’t want help from another of the
same family, the last person on earth, and I been kind of afraid you
might hold it some against me, my tacklin’ him behind your back like
that, after you told me not to.”
“Bless you, no!” Dan said heartily. “You haven’t done me anything except
kindness.”
“Well, and I’ve had many’s the favour from you, both business and
outside, Dan. That’s why I persuaded the old man the city needs a man
like you. You got many’s the long year of good in you yet, Dan.”
“I hope so; I hope so,” Dan said, and held out his hand. “Good-night,
and thank you.”
But Sam almost jumped as he took the extended hand. “My goodness, man,
you ought to be home in bed! You had too much excitement and you got a
high fever. If I had a temperature like that, I wouldn’t be here in my
office; I’d be talkin’ to my doctor.”
“Oh, it’ll pass off,” Dan returned cheerfully. “It’s only one of those
up-and-down things—chilly a little while and too hot the next little
while. Good-night, old man.” And with that, he thanked this boyhood
friend again, and descended to the busy street.
After a cloudy day the sky had cleared; a fair sunset was perceptible as
a gloomy fire in the heart of the western smoke; and Dan, having long
since dismissed his chauffeur, decided to walk home, instead of taking
either a trolley car or a taxicab. Before he had gone far, however, he
regretted this decision, for his feet had assumed a peculiar
independence, and seemed to be unfamiliar parts of him: it was only by
concentrating his will upon them that he forced them to continue to be
his carriers. “Strange!” he thought. “A man’s own feet behavin’ like
that!”
Then he laughed to himself, not grimly, yet somewhat ruefully.
Everything he had believed his own seemed to be behaving like that.
Ornaby Addition had been as much a part of him as his feet were, but he
was making his feet behave; and when he could get his breath, and start
in again, he would make Ornaby behave once more. The shellbacks might
get Ornaby away from him for a while, but they couldn’t keep it!
When he reached the tall cast-iron Oliphant gateposts, white no longer,
but oyster-coloured with the city grime, there was a taxicab waiting in
the street before them; and by this time he was so lifelessly tired he
wished the cab might carry him into the house, but exerting his will,
made his erratic feet serve him that far. He found his brother-in-law in
the library with Mrs. Oliphant, who was crying quietly.
George jumped up as Dan came into the room. “Dan, I’m glad you’ve come
before I have to go. I’ve got to catch the six-fifteen for New York——”
“No,” Dan said, and he sat heavily in one of the comfortable old
easy-chairs. “No. I don’t believe you better leave town just now.
They’ve thrown me out of control, but I got ’em to promise they’ll keep
you on, George. If there’s somebody there that’s in my interest, maybe
when I get on my feet again——” He turned to his mother, looking at her
perplexedly: “For heaven’s sake, don’t cry, mother! I’m sorry you’ve
heard about it, but don’t you fret: I’ll get back—after I’ve had a few
days’ rest, maybe I will. I don’t believe you’d better go to New York
just now, George.”
“I’ve got to,” George said. “Dan, I want—I want you to forgive me.”
“For wanting to go to New York?”
“No. For ever introducing you to my sister. Your mother wasn’t at home
this afternoon, and at three o’clock Lena left for New York.”
“She did?”
“Yes. Your chauffeur took her to the train. She told him—Dan, she told
him to say she wouldn’t be back, and she took Henry with her.”
“Wait a minute!” Dan passed his hand over his forehead, and uttered a
confused and plaintive sound of laughter. “Just a minute,” he said
apologetically. “There’s a good deal kind of seems to’ve hit me all at
once. I guess I’ll have to go kind of slow takin’ it in. You say Lena
says she isn’t comin’ back home?”
“She had the kindness to tell the chauffeur to say so,” George replied
bitterly.
“And Henry——”
“Henry went with her.”
“I guess then I better go after him,” Dan said, and he rose; but
immediately sank back in his chair. “I don’t know if I’d be able to go
on your train, though. I expect maybe I need a good night’s sleep,
first. I——”
“Will you leave it to me?” George asked sharply. “Will you just leave it
to me?”
“You mean gettin’ them to come home?”
“‘Them!’” George said. “I’m not sure that you need my sister here any
longer. I don’t think you ever needed her very much. But you do want
your son, and if you’ll leave it to me, I think I can bring him. Will
you, Dan?”
“I guess I’ll have to—just now,” Dan answered, with a repetition of his
apologetic laugh. “It’s all seemed to’ve kind of hit me at once, as it
were, George. I’m afraid what I need’s a good night’s sleep. I’m afraid
I’ll have to leave it to you.”
“I’ll bring him!” McMillan promised. “I’ll have him back here with me
four days from now.”