Beside his favorite window at the club, commanding the movement of the
street and the bare trees of the park, Len Willoughby had got together
the essentials to a pleasant hour. They consisted of the French and
English illustrated papers, two or three excellent Havanas, a bottle of
Scotch whisky, and a siphon of aerated water. On the table beside him
there was also an empty glass that had contained a cocktail.
It was the consoling moment of the day. After the strain of a
nine-o'clock breakfast and the rush to the city before eleven, after the
hours of purposeless hanging about the office of Toogood & Masterman,
where he could see he wasn't wanted, he found it restful to retire into
his own corner and sink drowsily into his cups. He did sink into them
drowsily, and yet through well-marked phases of excitement. He knew
those phases now; he could tell in advance how each stage would pass
into another.
There was first the comfort of the big chair and the friendly covers of
_L'Illustration_ and the _Graphic_. He didn't care to talk. He liked to
be let alone. When he came from the office he was generally dispirited.
Masterman's queer, contemptuous manner was enough to discourage any one.
He was sure, too, that Claude and Billy Cheever ridiculed his big, fat
figure behind his back. But once he sank into the deep, red-leather
arm-chair he was safe. It was ridiculous that a man of his age should
come to recognize the advantages of such a refuge, but he laid it to the
charge of a mean and spiteful world.
The world did not cease to be mean and spiteful till after he had had
his cocktail. It was wonderful the change that took place then--not
suddenly, but with a sweet, slow, cheering inner transformation. It was
a surging, a glowing, a mellowing. It was like the readjustment of the
eyes of the soul. It was seeing the world as generous, kindly. It was
growing generous and kindly himself, with the happy conviction that more
remained to be got out of life than he had ever wrung from it.
Still, it was something to be a rich banker. Every one couldn't be that.
Archie Masterman had certainly possessed a quick eye when he singled out
Len Willoughby as the man who could put the firm of Toogood & Masterman
on its feet. Three hundred thousand dollars of Bessie's money had gone
into that business in 1892, just in time to profit by the panic of 1893.
Lord, how they had bought!--gilt-edged stocks for next to nothing!--and
how they had sold, a few years later! Len never knew how much money they
made. He supposed Archie didn't, either. There were years when the Stock
Exchange had been like a wheat-field, yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold
and a hundredfold for every seed they had sown. He had never attempted
to keep a tally on what came in; it was sufficient to know that there
was always plenty to take out. Besides, it had been an understanding
from the first that Archie was to do the drudgery. Len liked this,
because it left him free--free for summers in Europe and winters in
Egypt or at Palm Beach.
By degrees reminiscence tended toward somnolence. And yet it couldn't be
said that Len slept. He kept sufficiently awake to put out his hand from
time to time and seize the tumbler. He could even brew himself another
glass. If a brother clubman strolled near enough to say, "Hello, Len!"
or, "Hello, Willoughby!" he could respond with a dull, "Hello, Tom!" or,
"Hello, Jones!" But he spoke as out of a depth; he spoke with some of
that weariness at being called back to life which Rembrandt depicts on
the face of Lazarus rising from the tomb. It was delicious to sink away
from the prosaic and the boresome, to be so fully awake that he could
follow the movement in the street and the hopping of the sparrows in the
trees, and yet be, as it were, removed, enchanted, seeing and hearing
and thinking and even drinking through the medium of a soothing,
slumbrous spell.
It could hardly ever be said that he went beyond this point. Though
there were occasions on which he miscalculated his effects, they could
generally be explained as accidental. Above all, they didn't rise from
an appetite for drink. The phrase was one he was fond of; he often used
it in condemning a vice of which he disapproved. He used it on this
particular afternoon, when Thor Masterman, who had come to drive him
homeward in his runabout, was sitting in the opposite arm-chair, waiting
to make the start.
"There's one thing about me, Thor--never had an appetite for drink. Not
to say _drink_. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't
know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it
is--bally rot! _You_ know that, Thor, don't you? Appetite for drink
something I despise."
Thor considered the moment one to be made use of. "Has father been
saying anything about it?"
"No; but he looks it. Suppose I don't know what he means? Sees double,
your father does. Anybody'd think, from the way he treats me, that I was
a disgrace to the firm. I'd like to know what that firm'd be without
me."
Thor tried to frame his next question discreetly. "I hope there's been
no suggestion of the firm's doing without you, Mr. Willoughby?"
To this Len gave but an indirect reply. "There'll be one soon, if your
father doesn't mind himself. I'll retire--and take my money out.
Where'll he be then?"
Thor felt his way. "You've taken out a good deal already, haven't you?"
"Not any more than belonged to me. You can bet your boots on that."
"No; not any more than belonged to you, of course. I was only thinking
that with the splendid house you've built--and its up-keep--and your
general expenses--which are pretty heavy, aren't they?--"
"Not any more than belonged to me, Thor. You can bet your boots on
that."
The repetition was made drowsily. The big head of bushy white hair, with
its correlative of bushy white beard, swayed with a slow movement that
ended in a jerk. It was obvious that the warnings and admonitions to
which Thor had been leading up were not for that day. They were useless
even when, a half-hour later, the movement of the runabout and the keen
air of the high lands as they approached the village roused the big
creature to a maudlin cursing of his luck.
On nearing the house, the delicate part of the task which of late Thor
had taken almost daily on himself became imminent. It was to get his
charge into the house, up to his room, and stretched on a couch without
being seen by Lois. Thor had once caught her carrying out this duty
unaided. She had evidently called for her father in her mother's
limousine, and as Thor passed down the village street she was helping
the staggering, ungainly figure toward the door. The next day Thor took
his runabout from the garage and went on the errand himself. He was also
more ingenious than she in finding a way by which the sorry object could
be smuggled indoors. The carriage entrance of the house was too near the
street. That it should be so was a trial to Mrs. Willoughby, who would
have preferred a house standing in grounds, but there never had been any
help for it. When money came in it had been Len's desire to buy back a
portion of the old Willoughby farm, and build a mansion on what might
reasonably be called his ancestral estate. Of this property there was
nothing in the market but a snip along County Street; and though he was
satisfied with the site as enabling him to display his prosperity to
every one who passed up and down, his wife regretted the absence of a
dignified approach.
By avoiding County Street when he came out from town, and following a
road that scrambled over the low hillside till it made a juncture with
Willoughby's Lane, by descending that ancient cow-path and bringing Len
to the privacy of his side-door, Thor endeavored to keep his father's
partner from becoming an object of public scandal. He took this trouble
not because he bothered about public scandal in itself, but in order to
protect Lois Willoughby.
So far his methods had been successful. They failed to-day only because
Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her
gloved hands she was trimming the leafless vine that grew over the
pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she
braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant
he drew up at the steps.
"So good of you to bring papa out from town! I'm sure he's enjoyed the
drive." Her hand was on the lever that opened the door of the machine.
"Poor papa! You look done up. I dare say you're not well. Be careful,
now," she continued, as he lumbered heavily to his feet. "That's a long
step there. Take my hand. I know you must be as tired as can be."
"Dog tired," the father complained, as he lowered himself cautiously.
"Dog's life. Tha's wha' I lead. No thanks for it, either. Damn!" The
imprecation was necessary because he missed his footing and came down
with a jerk. "Can't you see I'm gettin' out?" he groaned, peevishly.
"Stan'in' right in my way."
"Better leave him to me," Thor whispered. "I know just what to do with
him. One of the advantages of being a doctor."
Willoughby had mind enough to clutch at this suggestion. "Doctor's what
I want, hang it all! Sick as a dog. I do' know what'll happen to me some
day. Head aches fit to split. Never had appetite for drink. Tha's one
good thing about me."
* * * * *
Lois was still standing near the portico when Thor had assisted his
charge to his room, stretched him on a couch, covered him with a rug,
left him in a heavy sleep, and crept down the stairs again. It did not
escape his eye, quickened by the minutes he had spent with Rosie Fay,
that Lois lacked color. For the first time in his life he acutely
observed the difference between a plain woman and a pretty one.
"Oh, Thor," she began, as soon as he came out, "I don't know how to
thank you for your kindness to papa! How is it to go on? Where is it to
end? Oh, Thor, you're a doctor! Tell me what you think. Is there
anything I can do?"
His kind, searching eyes, as he stood with one hand on the
steering-wheel, rested on her silently. After all, she was twenty-seven,
and must take her portion of life's responsibilities. Besides, whatever
she might have to bear he meant to share with her. She should not be
obliged, like Rosie Fay, for instance, to carry her load alone.
And yet she didn't look as if she would shirk her part. With that tall,
erect figure, delicate in outline but strong with the freedom of an
open-air life, that proud head which was nevertheless carried meekly,
and that straightforward gaze, she gave the impression of being ready to
meet anything. The face might be irregular, lacking in many of the
tender prettinesses as natural to other girls, even at twenty-seven, as
flowers to a field; but no one could deny its force of character.
"I'll tell you something you could do," he said, at last. "You could
see--or try to see--that he doesn't spend too much." A slight pause
marked his hesitation before adding, "That no one spends too much."
"You mean mamma and me?"
He smiled faintly. "I mean whoever does the spending--but your father
most of all, because I'm afraid he's rather reckless. He's spent a good
deal during the last twelve or fifteen years, hasn't he?"
She was very quick. "More than he had a right to spend?"
"Well, more than my father," he felt it safe to say.
"But he had more than your father to spend, hadn't he?"
"Do you know that for a certainty?"
"I only know it from papa himself. But, oh, Thor, what is it? Why are
you asking?"
He ignored these questions to say: "Couldn't your mother tell us? After
all, it was her money, wasn't it?"
She shook her head. "Oh, mamma wouldn't know. If you're in any doubt
about it, why don't you ask Mr. Masterman? He could tell you better than
any one. Besides, mamma isn't in."
He spoke with a touch of scorn. "I suppose she's in town."
The tone evoked on Lois's part a little smile. They had had battles on
the subject before. "That's just where she is."
"That's just where she always is."
"Oh no; not always. Sometimes she stays at home. But she's there pretty
often, I admit. She has to make calls, partly because I won't--when I
can help it."
He spoke approvingly. "You, at any rate, don't fritter away your time
like other women."
"It depends on what other women you mean. I fritter away my time like
some women, even though it isn't like the women who make calls. I play
golf, for instance, and tennis; I even ride."
"All the same, you don't like the silly thing called society any more
than I do."
There was daylight enough to show him the blaze of bravado in her eyes.
Her way of holding her head had a certain daring--the daring of one too
frank, perhaps too proud, to shrink at truth. "Oh, I don't know. I dare
say I should have liked society well enough if society had liked me. But
it didn't. As mamma says, I wasn't a success." To compel him to view her
in all her lack of charm, she added, with a persistent smile, "You know
that, don't you?"
He did know it, though he could hardly say so. He had heard Claude
descant on the subject many a time in the years when Lois was still
putting in a timid appearance at dances. Claude was interested in
everything that had to do with girls, from their clothes to their
complexions.
"Can't make it out," he would say at breakfast, after a party; "dances
well; dresses well; but doesn't take. Fellows afraid of her. Everybody
shy of a girl who isn't popular. Hasn't enough devil. Girl ought to have
some devil, hang it all! Dance with her myself? Well, I do--about three
times a year. Have her left on my hands an hour at a time. Fellow can't
afford that. Think we have no chivalry? Should come to dances yourself,
old chap. You'd be a godsend to the girls in the dump."
Thor's dancing days were over before Lois's had begun, but he could
imagine what they had been to her. He could look back over the four or
five years that separated her from the ordeal, and still see her in "the
dump"--tall, timid, furtively watching the young men with those swimming
brown orbs of hers, wondering whether or not she should have a partner;
heartsore under her finery, often driving homeward in the weary early
hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew as much about it as
if he had been with her. He suffered for her retrospectively. He did it
to a degree that made his long face sorrowful.
The sorrow caused Lois some impatience. "For mercy's sake, Thor, don't
look at me like that! It isn't as bad as you seem to think. I don't mind
it."
"But I do," he declared, with indignation, only to feel that he was
slowly coloring.
He colored because the statement brought him within measurable distance
of a declaration which he meant to make, but for which he was not ready.
She seemed to divine his embarrassment, speaking with forced lightness.
"Please don't waste your sympathy on me. If any one's to be pitied, it's
mamma. I'm such a disappointment to her. Let's talk of something else.
Where have you been to-day, and what have you been doing?"
He was not blind to her tact, counting it to her credit for the future,
and asked abruptly if she knew Fay, the gardener.
"Fay, the gardener?" she echoed. "I know who he is." She went more
directly to the point in saying, "I know his daughter."
"Well, she's having a hard time."
"Is she? I should think she might."
His face grew keener. "Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know--she's that sort. At least, I should judge she was
that sort from the little I've seen of her."
"How much have you seen of her?"
"Almost nothing; but little as it was, it impressed itself on my mind. I
went to see her once at Mr. Whitney's suggestion."
"Whitney? He's the rector at St. John's, isn't he? What had he to do
with her? She doesn't belong to his church?"
Lois explained. "It was when we established the branch of the Girl's
Friendly Society at St. John's. Mr. Whitney thought she might care to
join it."
"And did she?"
"No; quite the other way. When I went to ask her, she resented it. She
had an idea I was patronizing her. That's the difficulty in approaching
girls like that."
He looked at her with a challenging expression. "Girls like what?"
"I suppose I mean girls who haven't much money--or who've got to work."
He still challenged her, his head thrown back. "They probably don't
consider themselves inferior to you for that reason. It wouldn't be
American if they did."
"And it wouldn't be American if I did; and I don't. They only make me
feel so because they feel it so strongly themselves. That's what's not
American; and it isn't on my part, but on theirs. They force their
sentiment back on me. They make me patronizing whether I will or no."
"And were you patronizing when you went to see Miss Fay?"
To conceal the slightly irritated attentiveness with which he waited for
her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie
Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter from whom it came.
"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, indifferently. "There was
something about her that disconcerted me."
"She's as good as we are," he declared, snapping the little door of one
of the lanterns.
"I don't deny that."
"A generation or two ago we were all farming people together. The
Willoughbys and the Brands and the Thorleys and the Fays were on an
equal footing. They worked for one another and intermarried. The
progress of the country has taken some of us and hurled us up, while it
has seized others of us and smashed us down; but we should try to get
over that when it comes to human intercourse."
"That's what I was doing when I asked her to join our Friendly Society."
"Pff! The deuce you were! I know your friendly societies. Keep those who
are down down. Help the humble to be humbler by making them obsequious."
"You know nothing at all about it," she declared, with spirit. "In
trying to make things better you're content to spin theories, while we
put something into practice."
He snapped the door of the second lamp with a little bang. "Put
something into practice, with the result that people resent it."
"With the result that Rosie Fay resented it; but she's not a fair
example. She's proud and rebellious and intense. I never saw any one
just like her."
"You probably never saw any one who had to be like her because they'd
had her luck. Look here, Lois," he said, with sudden earnestness, "I
want you to be a friend to that girl."
She opened her eyes in mild surprise at his intensity. "There's nothing
I should like better, if I knew how."
"But you do know how. It's easy enough. Treat her as you would a girl in
your own class--Elsie Darling, for instance."
"It's not so simple as that. When Elsie Darling came back after five or
six years abroad mamma and I drove into town and called on her. She
wasn't in, and we left our cards. Later, we invited her to lunch or to
dinner. I should be perfectly willing to go through the same formalities
with Miss Fay--only she'd think it queer. It would be queer. It would be
queer because she hasn't got--what shall I say?--she hasn't got the
social machinery for that kind of ceremoniousness. The machinery means
the method of approach, and with people who have to live as she does
it's the method of approach that presents the difficulty. It's not as
easy as it looks."
"Very well, then; let us admit that it's hard. The harder it is the more
it's the job for you."
There was an illuminating quality in her smile that atoned for lack of
beauty. "Oh, if you put it in that way--"
"I do put it in that way," he declared, with an earnestness toned down
by what was almost wistfulness. "There are so many things in which I
want help, Lois--and you're the one to help me."
She held out her hand with characteristic frankness. "I'll do anything I
can, Thor. Just tell me what you want me to do when you want me to do
it--and I'll try."
"Oh, there'll be a lot of things in which we shall have to pull
together," he said, as he held her hand. "I want you to remember, if
ever any trouble comes, that"--he hesitated for a word that wouldn't say
too much for the moment--"that I'll be there."
"Thank you, Thor. That's a great comfort."
She withdrew her hand quietly. Quietly, too, she assured him, as she
moved toward the steps, that she would not fail to force herself again
on Rosie Fay. "And about that other matter--the one you spoke of
first--you'll tell me more by and by, won't you?"
After her capacity for ringing true, his conscientiousness prompted him
to let her see that she could feel quite sure of him. "I'll tell you
anything I can find out; and one of these days, Lois, I must--I
must--say a lot more."
She mounted a step or two without turning away from him. "Oh, well," she
said, lightly, as though dismissing a topic of no importance, "there'll
be plenty of time."
But her smile was a happy one--so happy that he who smiled rarely smiled
back at her from the runabout.
He could scarcely be expected to know as yet that his pleasure was not
in any happiness of hers, but in the help she might bring to a little
creature whose image had haunted him all the afternoon--a little
creature whose desperate flower-like face looked up at him from a
background of poinsettias.