ON THE TAIL OF A TERRIER
When he returned with Granning into the court and upstairs to their
quarters a telegram greeted him from the floor as he opened the door. It
was from his father, brief and businesslike.
Arrive to-morrow. Wish to see you at three at office.
Important.
J. B. CROCKER.
He stood by the fireplace tearing it slowly to pieces, feeling the
approach of reality in his existence, a little frightened at its
imminence.
"Not bad news," said Granning, settling his great bulk on the couch and
reaching for a pipe from the rack. But at this instant a smiling
Japanese valet ushered in the trunks.
"This is Sweeney," said Granning with an introductory wave. "He's one of
four. We gave up trying to remember their names, so Fred rechristened
them. The others are Patsy, O'Rourke, and Houlahan. Sweeney speaks
perfect English, if you ask him for a telephone book he'll rush out and
bring you a taxicab. Understand, eh, Sweeney?"
"Velly well, yes, sir," said Sweeney, smiling a pleased smile.
"How the deuce do you work it then?" said Bojo, prying open his trunk.
"Oh, it's quite simple. Fred discovered the combination. All you have to
remember is that no matter what you ask for Sweeney always gets a taxi,
Patsy brings in the breakfast, Houlahan starts for the tailor, and
O'Rourke produces the scrubwoman. Just remember that and you'll have no
trouble. But for the Lord's sake don't get em mixed up." He broke off.
"What's the matter? You look serious."
"I'm wondering how I'll feel this time to-morrow," said Bojo with his
arms full of shirts and neckties. "I've got a pleasant little interview
with the Governor ahead." He filled a drawer of the bureau and returned
into the sitting-room, and as Granning, with his usual discretion,
ventured no question he added, looking out at the court where three
blazing windows of the restaurant were flinging pools of light across
the dark green plots: "He'll want me to chuck all this,--shoot up to a
hole in the mud; bury myself in a mill town for four or five years.
Pleasant prospect."
It did seem a bleak prospect, indeed, standing there in the commodious
bay window, seeing the flooded sky, hearing all the distant mingled
songs of the city. From the near-by wall the orchestra of the theater
sent the gay beats of a musical comedy march feebly out through open
windows, while from the adjoining wall of the Times Annex, beyond the
brilliant busy windows, the linotype machines were clicking out the news
of the world that came throbbing in. The theater, the press, that world
of imagination and hourly sensation, the half-opened restaurant with
glimpses of gay tables and the beginnings of the nightly cabaret, the
blazing court itself filled with ardent young men at the happy period
of the first great ventures, all were brought so close to his own eager
curiosity that he turned back rebelliously:
"By heavens, I won't do it, whatever happens! I won't be starved out for
the sake of more dollars. Well, would you in my place--now?"
He took a pair of shoes and flung them scudding across the floor into
the room and then stood looking down at the noncommittal figure of his
friend.
"Granning, you don't approve of us, do you? Stop looking like a sphinx.
Answer or I'll dump the tray over you. You don't approve, do you?
Besides, I watched your face to-night when Fred was spouting all that
ridiculous stuff."
"He meant it."
"Do you think so?" He sat down thoughtfully. "I wonder."
"What worried you?" said Granning directly, with a sharp look.
"I was sort of upset," Bojo admitted. "You know when you got through and
Fred got through, I thought after all you were right--we are gamblers.
We want things quick and easily. It's the excitement, the living on a
high tension."
"I always sort of figured out you'd want to do something different,"
said Granning slowly.
"So I would," he said moodily. "I wish I had Roscy's brains. I wonder
what I could do if I had to shift for myself."
"So that's the idea, is it?"
He nodded.
"The old Dad's stubborn as blazes. Had an up-and-down row with Jack, my
older brother, and turned him out. Lord knows what's become of him.
Dad's got as much love for the Wall Street game as your pesky old self.
Thinks they're a lot of loafers and confidence men."
"I didn't say it," said Granning with a short laugh.
"No, but you think it."
Granning rose as the clock struck ten and shouldered off to his bedroom
according to his invariable custom. When Bojo finally turned in it was
to sleep by fits and starts. The weight of the decision which he would
have to make on the morrow oppressed him. It was all very well to
announce that he would start at the bottom rather than yield, but the
world had opened up to him in a different light since the dinner of
confidences. He saw the two ways clearly--the long, slow plodding way of
Granning, and the other way, the world of opportunities through friends,
the world of quick results to those privileged to be behind the scenes.
If the end were the same, why take the way of toil and deprivation?
Besides, there were other reasons, sentimental reasons, that urged him
to the easier choice. If he could only make his father see things
rationally--but he had slight hope of making an impression upon that
direct and adamant will.
"Well, if everything goes smash, I'll make Roscy give me a job on the
paper," he thought as he turned restlessly in his bed.
The white gleam of a shifting electric sign, high above the roofs,
played over the opposite wall. At midnight he heard dimly two sounds
which were destined from now on to dispute the turning of the night
with their contending notes of work and pleasure--the sound of great
presses beginning to rumble under the morning edition and from the
restaurant an inconscient chorus welcoming the midnight with jingling
rhythm.
You want to cry,
You want to die,
But all you do is laugh, Hi! Hi!
You've got the High Jinks! That's why!
When he awoke the next morning it was to the sound of Roscoe Marsh in
the adjoining sitting-room telephoning for breakfast. The sun was
pouring over his coverlet and the clock stood reproachfully at nine o
clock. He slipped into a dressing-gown and found Marsh yawning over the
papers. Granning had departed at seven o'clock to the works on the
Jersey shore. DeLancy presently staggered out, tousled and sleepy,
resplendent in a blazing red satin dressing-gown, announcing:
"Lord, but this brokerage business is exacting work."
"Late party, eh?" said Bojo, laughing.
"Where the devil is the coffee?" said DeLancy for all answer.
Marsh, too, had been of the party after the night work had been
completed, though he showed scarcely a trace of the double strain.
Breakfast over, Bojo finished unpacking, killing time until noon
arrived, when, after a solicitous selection of shirts and neckties, he
went off by appointment to meet Miss Doris Drake.
To-day the thoughts of that other interview with his father were too
present in his imagination to permit of the usual zest such a meeting
usually drew forth. The attachment, for despite the insinuations of
DeLancy and Marsh it was hardly more than that, had been of long
standing. There had been a period toward the end of boarding-school when
he had been tremendously in love and had corresponded with extraordinary
faithfulness and treasured numerous tokens of feminine reciprocation
with a sentimental devotion. The infatuation had cooled, but the
devotion had remained as a necessary romantic outlet. She had been his
guest as a matter of course at all the numerous gala occasions of
college life, at the football match, the New London race, and the Prom.
He was tremendously proud to have her on his arm, so proud that at times
he temporarily felt a return of that bitter-sweet frenzy when at school
he turned hot and cold with the expectancy of her letters. At the bottom
he was perhaps playing at love, a little afraid of her with that spirit
of cautious deliberation which, had he but known it, abides not with
romance.
During the month on the ranch he had spent in their house-party, he had
a hundred times tried to convince himself that the old ardor was there,
and when somehow in his own honesty he failed, he would often wonder
what was the subtle reason that prevented it. She was everything that
the eye could imagine, brilliant, perhaps a little too much so for a
young lady of twenty, and sought after by a score of men to whom she
remained completely indifferent. He was flattered and yet he remained
uneasy, forced to admit to himself that there was something lacking in
her to stir his pulses as they had once been stirred. When DeLancy had
so frankly announced his intention of making a favorable marriage,
something had uneasily stirred his conscience. Was there after all some
such unconscious instinct in him at the bottom of this continued
intimacy?
When he reached the metropolitan castle of the Drakes on upper Fifth
Avenue, he found the salons still covered up in summer trappings, long
yellow linens over the furniture, the paintings on the walls still
wrapped in cheesecloth. As he was twirling his cane aimlessly before the
fireplace, wondering how long it would please Miss Doris to keep him
waiting, there came a breathless scamper and rush, accompanied by
delighted giggles, and the next moment an Irish terrier, growling and
snarling in mock fury, slid over the polished floor, pursued by a young
girl who had a firm grip on the stubby tail. The chase ended in the
center of the room with a sudden tumble. The dog, liberated, stood
quivering with delight at a safe distance, head on one side, tongue out,
ready for the next move of his tormenter who was camped in the middle of
the floor. But at this moment she perceived Bojo.
"Oh, hello," she said with a start of surprise but no confusion. "Who
are you?"
"I'm Crocker, Tom Crocker," he said, laughing back at the flushed oval
face, with mischievous eyes dancing somewhere in the golden hair that
tumbled in shocks to her shoulder.
She sprang up brightly, advancing with outstretched hand.
"Oh, you're Bojo," she said in correction. "You don't know me. I'm
Patsie, the terror of the family. Now don't say you thought I was a
child, I'm seventeen--going on eighteen in January."
He shook the hand that was thrust out to him in a direct boyish grip,
surprised and a little bewildered at the irresistible youth and spirits
of the young lady who stood so naturally before him in short skirt and
in simple shirtwaist open at the tanned neck.
"Of course they've told you I'm a terror," she said defiantly. He
nodded, which seemed to please her, for she rattled on: "Well, I am.
They had to keep me away until Dolly hooked the Duke. Have you seen him?
Well, if that's a duke all I've got to say is I think he's a mutt. Of
course you're waiting for Doris, aren't you?"
The assumption of his vassalage somehow stirred a little antagonism, but
before he could answer she was off again.
"Well, a jolly long wait you'll have, too. Doris is splashing around
among the rouge and powder like Romp in a puddle."
Her own cheeks needed no such encouragement, he thought, laughing back
at her through the pure infection of her high spirits.
"I like you; you're all right," she said, surveying him with her head on
one side like Romp, the terrier, who came sniffing up to him in the
friendliest way. "You're not like a lot of these fashion plates that
come in on tiptoes. Say, that was a bully tackle you made in that
Harvard game."
He was down on one knee rubbing the shaggy coat of the terrier. He
looked up.
"Oh you saw that, did you?"
"Yep! I guess there wasn't much left of that fellow! Dad said that was
the finest tackle he ever saw."
"It shook me up all right," he said, grinning.
"Well, if Dad likes you and Romp likes you, you must be some account,"
she continued, camping on the rug and seizing triumphantly the stubby
tail. "Dad's strong for you!"
Bojo settled on the edge of the sofa, watching the furious encounter
which took place for the possession of the strategic point.
"I suppose you're going to marry Doris," she said in a moment of calm,
while Romp made good his escape.
Bojo felt himself flushing under the direct child-like gaze.
"I should be very flattered if Doris--"
"Oh, don't talk that way," she said with a fling of her shoulders.
"That's like all the others. Tell me, are all New York men such hopeless
ninnies? Lord, I'm going to have a dreary time of it." She looked at him
critically. "One thing I like about you; you don't wear spats."
"I suppose you're home for the wedding," he asked curiously, "or are you
through with the boarding-school?"
"Didn't you hear about this?" she said with a touch to her shortened
hair. "They wanted me to come out and I said I wouldn't come out. And
when they said I should come out, I said to myself, I'll just fix them
so I can't come out, and I hacked off all my hair. That's why they sent
me off to Coventry for the summer. I'd have hacked it off again, but
Dad cut up so I let it grow, and now the plaguey old fashion has gotten
around to bobbed hair. What do you think of that?"
"So you don't want to come out?" he answered.
"What for? To be nice to a lot of old frumps you don't like, to dress up
and drink tea and lean up against a wall and have a crowd of mechanical
toys tell you that your eyes are like evening stars and all that rot. I
should say _not_."
"Well, what would you like to do?"
"I'd like to go riding and hunting with Dad, live in a great country
house, with lots of snow in winter and tobogganing--" She broke off with
a sudden suspicion. "Say, am I boring you?"
"You are not," he said with emphasis.
[Illustration: "'Say, you're a judge of muscle, aren't you?'"]
"You don't like that society flub-dub either, do you?" she continued
confidentially. "Lord, these dolled up women make me tired. I'd like to
jounce them ten miles over the hills. Say, you're a judge of muscle,
aren't you?"
"In a way."
"What do you think of that?" She held out a cool firm forearm for his
inspection and he was in this intimate position when Doris came down the
great stairway, with her willowy, trailing elegance. She gave a quick
glance of her dark eyes at the unconventional group, with Romp in the
middle an interested spectator, and said:
"Have I been keeping you hours? I hope this child's been amusing you."
The child, being at this moment perfectly screened, retorted by a
roguish wink which almost upset Bojo's equanimity. The two sisters
were an absolute contrast. In her two seasons Doris had been converted
into a complete woman of the world; she had the grace that was the grace
of art, yet undeniably effective; stunning was the term applied to her.
Her features were delicate, thinly turned, and a quality of precious
fragility was about her whole person, even to the conscious moods of her
smile, her enthusiasm, her serious poising for an instant of the eyes,
which were deep and black and lustrous as the artfully pleasing masses
of her hair. But the charm that was gone was the charm that looked up at
him from the unconscious twilight eyes of the younger sister!
"Patsie, you terrible tomboy--will you ever grow up!" she said
reprovingly. "Look at your dress and your hair. I never saw such a
little rowdy. Now run along like a dear. Mother's waiting."
But Patsie maliciously declined to hurry. She insisted that she had
promised to show off Romp and, abetted by Bojo in this deception, she
kept her sister waiting while she put the dog through his tricks and--to
cap the climax went off with a bombshell.
"My, you two don't look a bit glad to see each other--you look as
conventional as Dolly and the Duke."
"Heavens," said Doris with a sigh, "I shall have my hands full this
winter. What they'll think of her in society the Lord knows."
"I wouldn't worry about her," said Bojo pensively. "I don't think she's
going to have as much trouble as you fear."
"Oh, you think so?" said Doris, glancing up. Then she laid her hand over
his with a little pressure. "I'm awfully glad to see you, Bojo."
"I'm awfully glad to see you," he returned with accented enthusiasm.
"Just as glad as ever?"
"Of course."
"We shall have to use the Mercedes; Dolly's off with the Reynier. You
don't mind?" she said, flitting past the military footman. "Where are we
lunching?"
He named a fashionable restaurant.
"Oh, dear, no; you never see any one you know there. Let's go to the
Ritz." And without waiting for his answer she added: "Duncan, the Ritz."
At the restaurant all the personelle seemed to know her. The head waiter
himself showed her to a favorite corner, and advised with her
solicitously as to the selection of the menu, while Bojo, who had still
to eat ten thousand such luncheons, furtively compared his elegant
companion with the brilliant women who were grouped about him like rare
hot-house plants in a perfumed conservatory. The little shell hat she
wore suited her admirably, concealing her forehead and half of her eyes
with the same provoking mystery that the eastern veil lends to the women
of the Orient. Everything about her dress was soft and beguilingly
luxurious. All at once she turned from a fluttered welcome to a distant
group and, assuming a serious air, said:
"Have you seen Dad yet? Oh, of course not--you haven't had time. You
must right away. He's taken a real fancy to you, and he's promised me
to see that you make a lot of money--" she looked up in his eyes and
then down at the table with a shy smile, adding emphatically--"soon!"
"So you've made up your mind to that?"
"Yes, indeed. I'm going to make you!"
She nodded, laughing and favoring him with a long contemplation.
"You dress awfully well," she said approvingly. "Clothes seem to hang on
you just right--"
"But--" he said, laughing.
"Well, there are one or two things I'd like you to do," she admitted, a
little confused. "I wish you'd wear a mustache, just a little one like
the Duke. You'd look stunning."
He laughed in a way that disconcerted her, and an impulse came into his
mind to try her, for he began to resent the assumption of possession
which she had assumed.
"How do you think that would go in a mill town with overalls and a lunch
can?"
"What do you mean?
"In a week I expect to be shipped to New England, to a little town, with
ten thousand inhabitants; nice, cheery place with two moving-picture
houses and rows on rows of factory homes for society."
"For how long?"
"For four or five years."
"Bojo, how horrible! You're not serious!"
"I may be. How would you like to keep house up there?" He caught at the
disconsolate look in her face and added: "Don't worry, I know better
than to ask that of you. Now listen, Doris, we've been good chums too
long to fool ourselves. You've changed and you're going to change a lot
more. Do you really like this sort of life?"
"I adore it!"
"Dressing up, parading yourself, tearing around from one function to
another." She nodded, her face suddenly clouded over. "Then why in the
world do you want me? There are fifty--a hundred men you'll find will
play this game better than I can."
He had dropped his tone of sarcasm and was looking at her earnestly, but
the questions he put were put to his own conscience.
"Why do you act this way just when you've come back?" she said,
frightened at his sudden ascendency.
"Because I sometimes think that we both know that nothing is going to
happen," he said directly; "only it's hard to face the truth. Isn't that
it?"
"No, that isn't it. I love to be admired, I love pretty things and
society and all that. Why shouldn't I? But I do care for you, Bojo;
you've always brought out--" she was going to say, "the best in me," but
changed her mind and instead added: "I am very proud of you-- I always
would be. Don't look at me like that. What have I done?"
"Nothing," he said, drawing a breath. "You can't help being what you
are. Really, Doris, in the whole room you're the loveliest here. No one
has your style or a smile as bewitching as yours. There is a fascination
about you."
She was only half reassured.
"Well, then, don't talk so idiotically."
"Idiotic is exactly the word," he said with a laugh, and the
compliments he had paid her in a spirit of self-raillery awakened a
little feeling of tenderness after his teasing had shown him that,
according to her lights, she cared more than he had thought.
All the same when he rose to hurry downtown, he was under no illusions:
if opportunity permitted him to fit into the social scheme of things,
well and good; if not-- His thoughts recurred to Fred DeLancy's words:
"There are three ways of making money: to have it left to you, to earn
it, and to marry it."
He broke off angrily, troubled with doubts, and for the hundredth time
he found himself asking:
"Now why the deuce can't I be mad in love with a girl who cares for me,
who's a beauty and has everything in the world! What is it?"
For he had once been very much in love when he was a schoolboy and Doris
had been just a schoolgirl, with open eyes and impulsive direct ways,
like a certain young lady, with breathless, laughing lips who had come
sliding into his life on the comical tail of a scampering terrier.