As November and December passed and the new year came in, small
happenings began to remind Thorley Masterman that he was soon to inherit
money. It was a fact which he himself could scarcely credit. Perhaps
because he was not imaginative the condition of being thirty years of
age continued to seem remote even when he was within six weeks of that
goal.
He was first impressed with the rapidity of his approach to it on a
morning when he came late to breakfast, finding at his plate a long
envelope, bearing in its upper left-hand corner the request that in the
event of non-delivery it should be returned to the office of Darling &
Darling, at 27, Commonwealth Row. A glance, which he couldn't help
reading, passed round the table as he took it up. It was not new to him
that among the other members of the household, closely as they were
united, there was a sense of vague injustice because he was coming into
money and they were not.
The communication was brief, stating no more than the fact that in view
of the transfer of the estate which would take place a few weeks later,
Mr. William Darling, the sole trustee, would be glad to see the heir on
a day in the near future, to submit to him the list of investments and
other properties that were to make up his inheritance. Thor saw his
grandfather's money, so long a fairy prospect, as likely to become a
matter of solid cash. The change in his position would be considerable.
As yet, however, his position remained that of a son in his father's
family, and, in obedience to what he knew was expected of him, he read
the note aloud. Though there was an absence of comment, his stepmother,
in passing him his coffee, murmured, caressingly, "Dear old Thor."
"Dear old Thor," Claude mimicked, "will soon be able to do everything he
pleases."
Mrs. Masterman smiled. It was her mission to conciliate. "And what will
that be?"
"I know what it won't be," Claude said, scornfully. "It won't be
anything that has to do with a pretty girl."
Thor flushed. It was one of the minutes at which Claude's taunts gave
him all he could do to contain himself. As far as his younger brother
was concerned, he meant well by him. It had always been his intention
that his first use of Grandpa Thorley's money should be in supplementing
Claude's meager personal resources and helping him to keep on his feet.
He could be patient with him, too--patient under all sorts of stinging
gibes and double-edged compliments--patient for weeks, for
months--patient right up to the minute when something touched him too
keenly on the quick, and his wrath broke out with a fury he knew to be
dangerous. It was so dangerous as to make him afraid--afraid for Claude,
and more afraid for himself. There had been youthful quarrels between
them from which he had come away pale with terror, not at what he had
done, but at what he might have done had he not maintained some measure
of self-control.
The memory of such occasions kept him quiet now, though the irony of
Claude's speech cut so much deeper than any one could suspect. "Won't be
anything that has to do with a pretty girl!" Good God! When he was
beginning to feel his soul rent in the struggle between love and honor!
It was like something sprung on him--that had caught him unawares. There
were days when the suffering was so keen that he wondered if there was
no way of lawfully giving in. After all, he had never asked Lois
Willoughby to marry him. There had never been more between them than an
unspoken intention in his mind which had somehow communicated itself to
hers. But that was not a pledge. If he were to marry some one else, she
couldn't reproach him by so much as a syllable.
It was not often that he was tempted to reason thus, but Claude's
sarcasm brought up the question more squarely than it had ever raised
itself before. It was exactly the sort of subject on which, had it
concerned any one else, Thor would have turned for light to Lois
herself. In being debarred from her counsels, he felt strangely at a
loss. While he said to himself that after all these years there was but
one thing for him to do, he was curious as to the view other people
might take of such a situation. It was because of this need, and with
Claude's sneer ringing in his heart, that later in the day he sprang the
question on Dearlove. Dearlove was the derelict English butler whom Thor
had picked out of the gutter and put in charge of his office so that he
might have another chance. He had been summoned into his master's
presence to explain the subsidence in the contents of a bottle of cognac
that Thor kept at the office for emergency cases and had neglected to
put under lock and key.
"That was a full bottle a month ago," Thor declared, holding the
accusing object up to the light.
"Was it, sir?" Dearlove asked, dismally. He stood in his habitual
attitude, his arms crossed on his stomach, his hands thrust, monklike,
into his sleeves.
"And I've only taken one glass out of it--the day that young fellow fell
off his bicycle."
Dearlove eyed the bottle piteously. "'Aven't you, sir? Perhaps you took
more out that day than you thought."
But Thor broke in with what was really on his mind. "Look here,
Dearlove! What would you say to a man who was in love with one woman if
he married another?"
Dearlove was so astonished as to be for a minute at a loss for speech.
"What'd I say to him, sir? I'd say, what did he do it for? If it was--"
"Yes, Dearlove?" Thor encouraged. "If it was for--what?"
"Well, sir, if he'd got money with her, like--well, that'd be one
thing."
"But if he didn't? If it was a case in which money didn't matter?"
Dearlove shook his head. "I never 'eard of no such case as that, sir."
Thor grew interested in the sheerly human aspects of the subject.
Romance was so novel to him that he wondered if every one came under its
spell at some time--if there was no exception, not even Dearlove. He
leaned across the desk, his hands clasped upon it.
"Now, Dearlove, suppose it was your own case, and--"
"Oh, me, sir! I'm no example to no one--not with Brightstone 'anging on
to me the way she does. I can't look friendly at so much as a kitten
without Brightstone--"
"Now here's the situation, Dearlove," Thor interrupted, while the
ex-butler listened, his head judicially inclined to one side: "Suppose a
man--a patient of mine, let us say--meant to marry one young lady, and
let her see it. And suppose, later, he fell very much in love with
another young lady--"
"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit, wouldn't he, sir?"
"You think he ought to."
"I think he'd 'ave to, sir, unless he wanted to be sued for breach."
"It's the question of duty I'm thinking of, Dearlove."
"Ain't it his dooty to marry the one he's in love with, sir? Doesn't the
Good Book say as 'ow fallin' in love"--Dearlove blushed becomingly--"as
'ow fallin' in love is the way God A'mighty means to fertilize the earth
with people? Doesn't the Good Book say that, sir?"
"Perhaps it does. I believe it's the kind of primitive subject it's
likely to take up."
"So that there's that to be thought of, sir. They say the children not
born o' love matches ain't always strong." He added, as he shuffled
toward the door, "We never had no little ones, Brightstone and me--only
a very small one that died a few hours after it was born."
Thor was not convinced by this reasoning, but he was happier than
before. Such expressions of opinion, which would probably be indorsed by
nine people out of ten, assured him that he might follow the urging of
his heart and yet not be a dastard.
* * * * *
He felt on stronger ground, therefore, when he talked with Fay one
afternoon in the week following. "Suppose my father doesn't renew the
lease--what would happen to you?"
Fay raised himself from the act of doing something to a head of lettuce
which was unfolding its petals like a great green rose. His eyes had the
visionary look that marked his inability to come down to the practical.
"Well, sir, I don't rightly know."
"But you've thought of it, haven't you?"
"Not exactly thought of it. He's said he wouldn't two or three times
already, and then changed his mind."
"Would it do you any good if he did? Aren't you fighting a losing
battle, anyhow?"
"That's not wholly the way I judge, Dr. Thor. Neither the losing battle
nor the winning one can be told from the balance-sheet. The success or
failure of a man's work is chiefly in himself."
Thor studied this, gazing down the level of soft verdure to the end of
the greenhouse in which they stood. "I can see how that might be in one
way, but--"
"It's the way I mostly think of, sir. Every man has his own habit of
mind, hasn't he? I agree with the great prophet Thomas Carlyle when he
says"--he brought out the words with a mild pomposity--"when he says
that a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells in us which only
our works can render articulate. He speaks of the folly of the precept
'Know thyself' till we've made it 'Know what thou canst work at.' I can
work at this, Dr. Thor; I couldn't work at anything else. I know that
making both ends meet is an important part of it, of course--"
"But to you it isn't the _most_ important part of it."
Fay's eyes wandered to the other greenhouse in which lettuce grew, to
the hothouse full of flowers, and out over the forcing-beds of violets.
"No, Dr. Thor; not the most important part of it--to me. I've created
all this. I love it. It's my life. It's myself. And if--"
"And if my father doesn't renew the lease--?"
"Then I shall be done for. It won't be just going bankrupt in the money
sense; it'll be everything else--blasted." He subjoined, dreamily: "I
don't know what would happen to me after that. I'd be--I'd be equal to
committing crimes."
Thor couldn't remember ever having seen tears on an elderly man's cheeks
before. He took a turn down half the length of the greenhouse and back
again. "Look here, Fay," he said, in the tone of one making a
resolution, "supposing my father would give _me_ a lease of the place?"
"You, Dr. Thor?"
"Yes, me. Would you work it for me?"
Fay reflected long, while Thor watched the play of light and shadow over
the mild, mobile face. "It wouldn't be my own place any more, would it,
sir?"
"No, I suppose it wouldn't--not strictly. But it would be the next best
thing. It would be better than--"
"It would be better than being turned out." He reflected further. "Was
you thinking of taking it over as an investment, sir?"
Not having considered this side of his idea, Thor sought for a natural,
spontaneous answer, and was not long in finding one. "I want to be
identified with the village industries, because I'm going into
politics."
"Oh, are you, sir? I didn't know you was that way inclined."
"I'm not," Thor explained, when they had moved from the greenhouse into
the yard. "I only feel that we people of the old stock hang out of
politics too much and that I ought to pitch in and make one more. So you
get my idea, Fay. It'll give me standing to hold a bit of property like
this, even if it's only on lease."
There was no need for further explanations. Fay consented, not
cheerfully, but with a certain saddened and yet grateful resignation, of
which the expression was cut short by a cheery, ringing voice from the
gateway:
"Hello, Mr. Fay! Hello, Dr. Thor! Whoa, Maud, whoa! Stand, will you?
What you thinking of?"
The response to this greeting came from both men simultaneously, each
making it according to his capacity for heartiness. "Hello, Jim!" They
emphasized the welcome by unconsciously advancing to meet the tall,
stalwart young Irishman of the third generation on American soil who
came toward them with the long, loose limbs and swinging stride
inherited from an ancestry bred to tramping the hills of Connemara. A
pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of
breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the
peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of
superiority, from a carefully tended young mustache.
Thor and Jim Breen had been on friendly terms ever since they were boys;
but the case was not exceptional, since the latter was on similar terms
with every one in the village. From childhood upward he had been a local
character, chiefly because of a breezy self-respect that was as free
from self-consciousness as from self-importance. There was no one to
whom he wasn't polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was
afraid. "Hello, Mr. Masterman!" "Hello, Dr. Hilary!" "Hello, Father
Ryan!" "Hello Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had
begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the
age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful
familiarity, not even Archie Masterman.
As a man in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never
entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or
nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town
without calling on, or calling up, every one he could claim as an
acquaintance. He was always on hand for fires, for fights, for fallen
horses, for first-aid in accidents, for ball-games, for the outings of
Boy Scouts, and for village theatricals and dances. There were rumors
that he was sometimes "wild," but the wildness being confined to his
incursions into the city--which generally took place after dark--it was
not sufficiently in evidence to shock the home community. It was a
matter of common knowledge that he used, in village phrase, "to go with"
Rosie Fay--the breaking of the friendship being attributed by some of
the well-informed to his reported wildness, and by others to differences
in religion. As Thor had been absent in Europe during this episode, and
was without the native suspicion that would have connected the two
names, he took Jim's arrival pleasantly.
Having finished his bit of business, which concerned an order for
azaleas too large for his father to meet, and in which Mr. Fay might
find it to his advantage to combine, Jim turned blithely toward Thor.
"Hear about the town meeting, Dr. Thor?--what old Billy Taylor said
about the new bridge? What do you think of that for nerve? Tell you
what, there's some things in this town needs clearing up."
The statement bringing out Thor's own intention to run as a candidate
for office at the next election, Jim expressed his interest in the
vernacular of the hour, "What do you know about that?" Further
discussion of politics ending in Jim's pledging his support to his
boyhood's friend, Thor shook hands with an encouraging sense of being
embarked on a public career, and went forward to visit his patient in
the house.
His steps were arrested, however, by hearing Jim say with casual
light-heartedness, "Rosie anywheres about, Mr. Fay?"
The old man having nodded in the direction of the hothouse, Jim advanced
almost to the door, where Thor, on looking over his shoulder, saw him
pause.
It was a curious pause for one so self-confident as the young
Irishman--a pause like that of a man grown suddenly doubtful, timid,
distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor's
surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and
stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he had mounted the wagon,
however, and begun to tug at Maud he was whistling the popular air of
the moment with no more than a subdued note in his gaiety.