DORIS MEETS A CRISIS
It was toward the end of August, when the dry exhaustion of the summer
had begun to be touched with the healing cool of delicious nights, that
Bojo and Granning were lolling on the window-seat, busy at their pipes.
Below in the Court foggy shapes were sunk in cozy chairs under the
spread of the great cotton umbrella, and the languid echoes of
wandering, contented conversation came to them like the pleasant closing
sounds of the day across twilight fields--the homing jingle of cattle,
the returning creak of laden wagons seeking the barns, or a tiny distant
welcome from a barking throat.
"Ouf! It's good to get a lung-full of cool air again," said Bojo,
turning gratefully to an easier position.
"Well, how do you like being a horny-handed son of toil?" said Granning.
"I like it."
"You're through the worst of it now."
"It's sort of like being in training again," said Bojo reminiscently.
"Jove, how they used to drive us in the fall--the old slave drivers!
It's great, though, to feel you've earned the right to rest. I say,
Granning, it's a funny thing, but you know that first raise, ten dollars
a week, thrilled me more than making thirty thousand in a clip. Come to
think of it, I don't believe I ever really made that money."
"You didn't."
Bojo laughed. "Well, this is a man's life," he said evasively. Then
suddenly: "What precious idiots we were that first night, prophesying
our lives. Poor old Freddie, who was going to marry a million and all
that--and weren't we indignant, though, at him! A fine grave he's dug
for himself now. Queer."
"I like him better than if he'd married the other girl in cold blood."
"Yes, I suppose I do too. Still--" He broke off. "Do you believe he's
had the sense to get out of the market?"
"No," said Granning shortly.
"Good Lord, if I thought that, I'd--"
"You'd do nothing. You can't help him--neither can I or any one. After
all--don't think I'm hard, but what does it matter what happens to
fellows like Fred DeLancy? What's important is what happens to men
who've got power and energy and are trying to force their way up. Men
you and I know--"
"That's rather cruel."
"Well, life is cruel. My sympathy is with the fellow that's knocking for
opportunity, not the fellow who's throwing it away. Bojo, the salvation
of this country isn't in making sinecures for good-natured, lovable
chaps of the second generation, but in sorting 'em out and letting the
weak ones fall behind. Keep open the doors to those who are coming up."
"I don't think you've ever forgiven Fred for taking that money," said
Bojo reluctantly. "You don't like him."
"I did like him--but I've grown beyond him--and so have you," said
Granning bluntly. In the last few months he had come to speak his mind
directly to Bojo, with results that sometimes shocked the younger man.
At this moment the telephone rang.
"Shuffle over to it," said Granning, withdrawing his legs. "No one ever
telephones for me."
"It may be from Fred--perhaps they're back," said Bojo, departing.
He came back in a few moments rather excited.
"That's queer--it's from Doris."
"Been rather neglectful, haven't you?"
"It wasn't long distance. She's here!"
"Here--in town?"
"Yes. Funny she didn't warn me," said Bojo, mystified. He dug out his
hat from the crowded desk and halted before the reclining figure. "Well,
I'm summoned. Sorry to leave you. Felt just like rambling along."
"Well, be firm."
"What?"
"Be firm."
"Now just what did he mean by that?" he said to himself as he tripped
down the stairs and out. He puzzled more over this advice as he hastened
uptown. Why had Doris come, abruptly and without notification? The more
he thought of it, the more he believed he understood the reason of
Granning's warning. Doris had come to him with some new proposition, an
investment for quick returns or an opening along lines of increasing
salaries. The open surface-car with its cargo of coatless men and
shirt-waisted women went pounding up the Avenue, hurrying him toward
Doris.
He would have been at loss to define to himself his real feelings.
Despite the sudden awakening in her, the delirious quality of romance
had not returned to him. Memories of another face and other hours had
ended that. Yet there was a solid feeling of doing the right thing, of
playing square by Doris, and of a responsibility well performed. In the
long, crowded, heated weeks there were long intervals when he forgot her
entirely. Yet when he saw her or opened her letters, poignant with
solicitude and faith, he felt his imagination kindle, if but for the
moment.
He had reached the self-conscious stage in youth when he looked upon
himself as supernaturally old and tried in the furnace of experience. He
quieted the dormant longings in his heart by assuring himself that he
now took a different view of marriage, a more significant one as a grave
social step. The less he felt the romance of their relations, the more
he acknowledged the solid supplementary qualities which Doris would
bring him as his companion, as associate and organizer of the home.
That he could not give her all that she now poured out unreservedly to
him, gave him at times a twinge of pity and compassion. She was so keen
to progress, to broaden the outlook of her views, to be of real service
to him. There were moments in her letters of inner revelations that
stirred him almost with the guilty feeling of surprising what was not
his to see. The idea of an early marriage would have been unbearable,
yet as a possibility of the future it seemed to him an eminently wise
and just procedure.
At the Drake mansion his ring was answered by a caretaker, who came
doubtfully to let him in, pausing to search for the electric buttons. In
the anteroom and down the vistas of the salons, everything was bare and
draped in dust-clothes; there was a feeling of abandonment and
loneliness in the bared arches, as on his first visit a year before.
"Bojo--is it you?"
He heard her voice descending somewhere from the upper flights of the
great stone stairway, and answered cheerily. The caretaker disappeared,
satisfied, and he waited at the foot while she came rushing down and
hung herself in his arms.
"Why, Doris!" he exclaimed, surprised at her emotion and the tenseness
of the figure that clung to him. "Doris, why, what's wrong?"
"Wait, wait," she said breathlessly, burying her head on his shoulder
and tightening the grip of her arms.
She led him, still clinging to his side, through the ballroom and the
little salon into the great library, where he had gone for his decisive
interview with Drake. They stood a moment in filtered obscurity, groping
for the buttons, until suddenly the room sprang out of the night. Then
he saw that she had been weeping. Before he could exclaim, the tears
sprang to her eyes and she flung herself in his arms again, sheltering
her head against his shoulder, clinging to his protection as though
reeling before the sudden down swoop of a storm. His first thought was
of death, a catastrophe in the family--father, mother--Patsie! At this
thought his heart seemed to stop and he said brokenly:
"Doris, what is it--nothing has happened--no one is--is in danger?"
"No, no," she said in a whisper. "Oh, don't make me speak--not just yet.
Keep your arms about me. Tighter so that I can never, never get away."
He obeyed, wondering, his mind alert, seeking a reason for this strange
emotion. Suddenly she raised her head and, seizing his in her hands with
such tenacity that he felt the cut of her sharp little fingers, kissed
him with the poignant agony of a great separation.
"Bojo, remember this," she cried through her tears, "whatever
happens--whatever comes--it is you--you! I shall love only you all my
life--no one else!"
"Whatever happens?" he said, frowning, but beginning to have a glimmer
of the truth. "What do you mean?"
She moved from him, standing, with head slightly down, staring at him
silently for a long moment. Then she said, shaking her head slowly:
"Oh, how you will hate me!"
He went to her quickly and, taking her by the wrist, led her to the big
sofa.
"Now sit down. Tell me just what this all means!"
His tone was harsh, and she glanced at him, frightened.
"It means," she said at last, "that I am not what you thought--what I
thought I could be. I am not strong. I've tried and I've failed! I am
very, very weak, very selfish. I can't give up what I'm used to--luxury!
I can't, Bojo, I can't--it's beyond me!" She turned away, her
handkerchief to her eyes, while he sat without a word, compelling her to
go on. At last she turned, stealing a look at his set face. "Of course
you'll say you told me--but I tried-- I did try!"
"I am saying nothing at all," he said quietly. "So you wish to end the
engagement, that is all, isn't it?"
"All!" she said indignantly with a flood of tears. "Oh, how can you look
at me so brutally? I am miserable, absolutely miserable. I am throwing
away my life, my whole chance of loving, of being happy, and you look at
me as though you were sending me to the gallows!"
If her distress was intended to weaken him in his attitude of quiet,
critical contemplation, it failed. Nevertheless he modified his tone
somewhat.
"I am quite in the dark. I understand you have come to break off the
engagement--that is not perhaps the shock you believe it--but I am
curious to know what are your reasons."
Her tears stopped abruptly. She faced his glance.
"I said you would hate me," she said slowly.
"No, I do not think so."
"Yes, yes, you will hate me," she said breathlessly, "and you should.
Oh, I'm not excusing myself. I hate myself. I despise myself. If you
hated me you would only be right. Yes, you have every right."
"Are you engaged to any one else, Doris?" he said with a smile.
She sprang up indignantly.
"Oh, how could you say such a thing! Bojo!"
"If I have offended you I beg your pardon."
"You beg my pardon," she said, her lip trembling. She came and knelt at
his side. "Bojo, look at me. You believe that I love you, don't
you?--that you are the only thing, the only person in my life that I
have ever loved, and that if I give you up it is because I must, because
I can't help it, because--because I know myself so well that I know I
haven't the strength to do what other women do--to be--poor! There you
have it!"
"But you knew all this six months ago," he said, scenting some mystery.
"Something else must have happened--what?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
He waited a moment.
"Well?"
She rose, listened a moment and glanced carefully about the room.
Afterward he remembered this glance.
"You must give me your word of honor not to mention--not to breathe one
word I say to you," she said in a lower voice.
"That is hardly necessary," he said quickly, on his dignity.
"No, no. This is not my secret. Your word of honor. I must have your
word of honor."
"Very well," he said, carried away by his curiosity.
"Before the end of the year, in a few months even, Dad may lose every
cent he has!"
"He told you?" he said incredulously. "Or is this some trick of your
mother's?"
"No, no, it is no trick. Dad told us himself."
"Us? Whom?"
"Mother and me!"
"And Patsie?"
"No, Patsie is away."
"When did he tell you?"
"Just a week ago."
"But why?-- That doesn't seem like him to tell you," said Bojo,
frowning. "Perhaps you've exaggerated."
"No, no. He is in a bad way. He is caught," she said hurriedly. "Times
have been hard, the market has gone down steadily--all summer--way, way
down--and Dad is carrying enormous blocks of stock--must carry them or
admit defeat--and you know Dad! I don't know exactly what's wrong. He
didn't go into the matter; but he has enemies, tremendous enemies that
are trying to put him out, and it's a question of credit. Oh, if you'd
seen his face when he told us, you'd know just how serious it was!"
"Just what did he say?"
"He told us--I can't remember the words--that if times continued as they
had been, he stood a chance of losing every cent he had, that he was in
a fight for existence and that he couldn't tell how it would come out."
She hesitated a moment and added: "He thought the situation so critical
that we should know of it."
This last and the halting before saying it, suddenly gave him the light
he had been seeking during all this interview.
"In other words, Doris," he said quickly, "frankly and honestly, since
we are going to be honest now that we have come to the parting of the
ways--your father let you understand so that you might know how critical
the situation was and take your measures accordingly. That's it--isn't
it?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"I hope at least that you haven't concealed anything from Boskirk," he
said quietly.
"Why should I tell him?"--she started to burst out, and caught her
breath, trapped.
"So you are already to be congratulated?" he said, looking at her with a
smile.
"That isn't true," she said hastily. "You know and I know that Mr.
Boskirk wants to marry me, that I can have him any day--"
"Don't," he said gravely. "You know there is an understanding--"
"Oh, an understanding--" she began.
"True," he interrupted. "At this moment, Doris, you know that Boskirk
has proposed and you have accepted him. Why deny it? It is quite plain.
You made up your mind that you would marry him the moment you learned
you might be a pauper. Come, be honest--be square."
She went away from him and stood by the fireplace, her back to him.
"That is true--all of it," she said. A shudder passed over her. "I hate
him!"
"What!" he cried, advancing toward her in amazement. "You hate him and
yet you will marry him?"
"Yes. Because I can't bear to give up anything--because I am a weak,
selfish woman."
In a flash he saw her as she would be--this woman who now stood before
him twisting and turning in half-sincere outbursts, seeking to excuse or
accuse herself before his eyes from the need of dramatic sensations.
"You will be," he said quietly. "So you are going to marry Boskirk?"
She nodded.
"Soon, _very_ soon?"
She winced under the note of sarcasm in his voice and turned
breathlessly:
"Oh, Bojo--you despise me!"
"No--" he said indifferently. He held out his hand. "Well, we have said
all we have to say, haven't we?"
Before he could prevent her or divine her intentions, she had flung
herself on his shoulder, clinging to him despite his efforts to tear her
from him.
"Please, no scenes," he said hastily. "Quite unnecessary."
She wished him to kiss her once--a last kiss; but he refused. Then she
began to cry hysterically, vowing again and again, between her torrents
of self-accusation, that no matter what the future brought she would
never love any one else but him. It was not until she grew exhausted
from the very storm of her emotion that he was able to loosen her arms
and force her from him.
"Oh, you don't love me--you don't care!" she cried, when at last she
felt herself alone and her arms empty.
"If that can be any consolation--if your grief is real--if you really do
care for me," he said, "that is true. I do not love you, Doris, and I
never have. That is why I do not hate you or despise you. I am sorry,
awfully sorry. You could have been such an awfully good sort."
At this she caught her throat and, afraid of another paroxysm, he went
out quickly.
Before the curb the touring-car was waiting. An idea came to him,
remembering the glance Doris had sent about the room.
"Going back to-night, Carver?" he said to the chauffeur. "Much of a
run?"
"Two hours and a half, sir."
"Mrs. Drake came down with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's the answer," he thought to himself, wondering how much she might
have overheard. "Poor Doris."
He thought of her already as some one distantly removed, amazed to
realize how quickly with the snapping of the artificial bond their true
relationship had readjusted itself. He thought of her only with a great
wonder, recognizing now all the possibilities which had lain in her for
good, saddened, and shuddering in his young imagination at the price she
had elected to pay.
He turned the corner with a last look at the turreted and gabled roof of
the great Drake mansion, faint unreal shadows against the starlit sky,
as though, in his newly acquired knowledge of the tremendous
catastrophe impending, it lay against the crowded silhouette of the city
like a thing of dreams to vanish with the awakening reality.
Before the next month was over, Doris had married young Boskirk--a quiet
country wedding whose simplicity excited much comment. Before another
fortnight the market, which had been slowly receding before the rising
wrath of a great financial panic, broke violently.