Thor was deaf to these enigmatic words in the excitement of perceiving
that the girl had beauty. The discovery gave him a new sort of pleasure
as he turned his runabout toward the town. Beauty had not hitherto been
a condition to which he attached great value. If anything, he had held
it in some scorn. Now, for the first time in his emotional life, he was
stirred by a girl's mere prettiness--a quite unusual prettiness, it had
to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a
little worn by work, a little coarsened by wind and weather; a
prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for
those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. He was obliged to
remind himself that it was nothing to him, since he had never swerved
from the intention to marry Lois Willoughby as soon as he had made a
start in practice and come into the money he was to get at thirty; but
he could see it was the sort of thing by which other men might be
affected, and came to a mental standstill there.
Driving on into the city, he went straight to his father's office in
Commonwealth Row. It was already after four o'clock, and except for two
young men sorting checks and putting away ledgers, the cagelike
divisions of the banking department were empty. One of the men was
whistling; the other was calling in a loud, gay voice, "Say, Cheever,
what about to-night?"--signs that the enforced decorum of the day was
past.
Claude was in the outer office reserved for customers. He wore his
overcoat, hat, and gloves. A stick hung over his left arm by its crooked
handle. The ticker was silent, but a portion of the tape fluttered
between his gloved fingers.
Though his back was toward the door, he recognized his half-brother's
step with that mixture of envy and irritation which Thor's presence
always stirred in him. He was not without fraternal affection,
especially when Thor was away; when he was at home it was difficult for
Claude not to resent the elder's superiority. Claude called it
superiority for want of a better word, though he meant no more than a
combination of advantages he himself would have enjoyed. He meant Thor's
prospective money, his good spirits, good temper, and good health.
Claude had not good health, which excused, in his judgment, his lack of
good spirits and good temper. Neither had Claude any money beyond the
fifteen hundred dollars a year he earned in his father's office. He was
in the habit of saying to himself, and in confidence to his friends,
that it was "damned hard luck" that he should be compelled to live on a
pittance like that, when Thor, within a few months, would come into a
good thirty thousand a year.
It was some consolation that Thor was what his brother called "an ugly
beast"--sallow and lantern-jawed, with a long, narrow head that looked
as if it had been sat on. The eyes were not bad; that had to be
admitted; they were as friendly as a welcoming light; but the mouth was
so big and aggressive that even the mustache Thor was trying to grow
couldn't subdue its boldness. As for the nose and chin, they
looked--according to Claude's account--as if they had been created soft,
and subjected to a system of grotesque elongation before hardening.
Claude could the more safely make game of his brother's looks seeing
that he himself was notably handsome, with traits as regular as if they
had been carved, and a profile so exact that it was frequently exposed
in photographers' windows, to the envy of gentlemen gazers. While Thor
had once tried to mitigate his features by a beard that had been
unsuccessful and had now disappeared, Claude wouldn't disfigure himself
by a hair. He was as clean-shaven as a marble Apollo, and not less
neatly limbed.
"Gone." Claude raised his eyes just long enough to utter the word.
Thor came to an abrupt stop. "Club?"
"Suppose so." He added, without raising his head, "Wish to God the
drunken sot would stay there." He continued, while still apparently
reading the tape in his hand, "Father wishes it, too."
Thor was not altogether taken by surprise. Ever since his return from
Europe, a year earlier, he had wondered how his father's patience could
hold out. He took it that there was a reason for it, a reason he at once
expressed to Claude:
"Father can't wish it. He can't afford to."
Claude lifted his handsome, rather insolent face. "Why not?"
"For the simple reason that he's got his money."
"Much you know about it. Len Willoughby hasn't enough money left in
Toogood & Masterman's to take him on a trip to Europe."
Thor backed toward the receiving-teller's wicket, where he rested the
tips of his elbows on the counter. He was visibly perturbed. "What's
become of it, then?"
"Don't ask me. All I know is what I'm telling you."
"Did father say so himself?"
"Not in so many words. But I know it." He tossed the tape from him and
began to smooth his gloves. "Father means to ship him."
"Ship him? He can't do that."
"Can't? I should like to know why not."
"Because he can't. That's why. Because he has--"
"Yes? Cough it up. Speak as if you had something up your sleeve."
Thor reflected as to the wisdom of saying more. "Well, I have," he
admitted. "It's something I remember from the time we were kids. You
were too young to notice. But _I_ noticed--and I haven't forgotten.
Father can't ship Len Willoughby without being sure he has enough to
live on." He decided to speak out, if for no other reason than that of
securing Claude's co-operation. "Father persuaded Mr. Willoughby to put
Mrs. Willoughby's money into the business when he didn't want to."
"Ah, shucks!" Claude exclaimed, contemptuously.
"He did," Thor insisted. "It was back in 1892, in Paris, that first time
they took us abroad. You were only nine and I was twelve. I heard them.
I was hanging round one evening in that little hotel we stayed at in the
rue de Rivoli--the Hôtel de Marsan, wasn't it? The Willoughbys had been
living in Paris for five or six years, and father got them to come home.
I heard him ask mother to talk it up with Mrs. Willoughby. Mother said
she didn't want to, but father got round her, and she agreed to try. She
said, too, that Bessie might be willing because Len had already begun to
take too much and it would brace him up if he got work to do."
"Work!" Claude sniffed. "Him!"
"Father knew he couldn't work--knew he'd tried all sorts of
things--first to be an artist, then to write, then to get into the
consular service, and the Lord knows what. It wasn't his work that
father was after. It was just when the Toogood estate withdrew old Mr.
Toogood's money, and father had to have more capital."
"Well, Len Willoughby didn't have any."
"No; but his wife had. It came to the same thing. Suppose she must have
had between three and four hundred thousand from old man Brand. I
remember hearing father say to mother that Len was making ducks and
drakes of it as fast as he could, and that it might as well help the
firm of Toogood & Masterman as go to the deuce. Can still hear father
feeding the poor fool with bluff about the great banker he'd make and
how it was the dead loss of a fortune that he hadn't had a seat on the
Stock Exchange years before."
Claude sniffed again. "You'd better carry your load to father himself."
"I will--if I have to." Before Claude had found a rejoinder, Thor went
on, changing the subject abruptly, so as not to be led into being
indiscreet, "Say, Claude, do you remember Fay, the gardener?"
Claude was still smoothing his gloves, but he stopped, with the thumb
and fingers of his right hand grasping the middle finger of the left.
More than ever his features suggested a marble stoniness. "No."
"Oh, but you must. Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the
greenhouses on father's land north of the pond."
Claude recovered himself slightly. "Well, what about him?"
"Been to see his wife. Patient of Uncle Sim's. Turned her on to me.
They're having the deuce of a time."
Claude recovered himself still more. He looked at his brother curiously.
"Well, what's it got to do with me?"
"Nothing directly."
"Well, then--indirectly?" Claude asked, defiantly.
"Only this, that it has to do with both of us, since it concerns
father."
Claude was by this time master of himself. "Look here, Thor. Are you
getting a bee in your bonnet about father?"
"Good Lord! no. But father's immersed in business. He can't be expected
to know how all the details of his policy work out. He's not young any
longer, and he isn't in touch with modern social and economic ideas."
"Oh, stow the modern social and economic ideas, and let's get to
business. What's up with this family--of--of--What-d'you-call-'ems?"
With his feet planted firmly apart, Claude swung his stick airily back
and forth across the front of his person, though he listened with
apparent attention.
"You know, Thor, as a matter of fact," he explained, when the latter had
finished his account, "that the kindest thing father can do for Fay is
to let him peter out. Fay thinks that father and the lease are the
obstacle he's up against, when in reality it's the whole thing."
"Oh, so you do know about it?"
Claude saw his mistake, and righted himself quickly. "Y-yes. Now that
you--you speak of it, I--I do. It comes--a--back to me. I've heard
father mention it."
"And what did father say?"
"Just what I'm telling you. That the lease isn't the chief factor in
Fay's troubles--isn't really a factor at all. Poor old fellow's a
dunderhead. That's where it is in a nutshell. Never could make a living.
Never will. Remember him?"
"Vaguely. Haven't seen him for years."
"Well, when you do see him you'll understand. Nice old chap as ever
lived. Only impractical, dreamy. Gentle as a sheep--and no more capable
of running that big, expensive plant than a motherly old ewe. That's
where the trouble is. When father's closed down on him and edged him
out--quietly, you understand--it'll be the best thing that ever happened
to them all."
Thor reflected. "I see that you know more about it than you thought. You
know all about it."
Again Claude caught himself up, shifting his position adroitly. "Oh no,
I don't. Just what I've heard father say. When you spoke of it at first
the name slipped my memory."
Thor reverted to the original theme. "The son's in jail. Did you know
that?"
But Claude was again on his guard. "Oh, so there's a son?"
"Son about your age. Matt his name is. Surely you must recall him. Used
to pick pease with us when Fay'd let us do it."
Claude shook his head silently.
"And there's a girl."
Claude's stick hung limply before him. His face and figure resumed their
stony immobility. "Oh, is there? Plain?"
"No; pretty. Very pretty. Very unusually pretty. Come to think of it, I
shouldn't mind saying--Yes, I will say it! She's the prettiest girl I've
ever seen." The eyes of the two brothers met. "Bar none."
The smile on Claude's lips might have passed for an expression of
brotherly chaff. "Go it, old chap. Seem smitten."
"Oh, it isn't that. Nothing of the sort at all. I speak of her only
because I'm sorry for her. Brunt of whole thing comes on her."
"Well, what do you propose that we should do?"
"I haven't got as far as proposing. Haven't thought the thing out at
all. But I think we ought to do something--you and I."
"We can't do anything without father--and father won't. He simply won't.
Fay'll have to go. Good thing, too; that's what I say. Get 'em all on a
basis on which they can manage. Fay'll find a job with one of the other
growers--"
"Yes; but what's to become of the girl?"
Claude stared with a kind of bravado. "How the devil do I know? She'll
do the best she can, I suppose. Go into a shop. Lots of girls go into
shops."
Thor studied his brother with mild curiosity. "You're a queer fellow,
Claude. A minute ago you couldn't remember Fay's name; and now you've
got his whole business at your fingers' ends."
But Claude repeated his explanation. "Got father's business at my
fingers' ends, if that's what you mean. In such big affairs chap like
Fay only a detail. Couldn't recall him at first, but once I'd caught on
to him--"
By moving away toward the inner office, where Cheever was still at work,
Claude intimated that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was
ended. Thor returned to his runabout.
"Say, Claude," Cheever called, "comin' to see 'The Champion' to-night,
ain't you? Countin' on you."
Claude laid a friendly hand on Cheever's arm. He liked to be on easy
terms with his father's clerks. "Awfully sorry, Billy, but you must
excuse me. Fact is, that damn-fool brother of mine has been putting his
finger in my pie. Got to do something to get it out--and do it quick.
Awfully sorry. Sha'n't be free."