PATSIE APPEALS FOR HELP
Meanwhile Fred and Louise returned. He went to see them at a fashionable
hotel where they were staying temporarily. The great rooms and the large
salon on the corner, overlooking the serried flight of houses and
factories toward the river must have cost at least fifteen dollars a
day. Louise went into the bedroom presently to her hairdresser, closing
the door.
"Congratulations, Prince," said Bojo laughing, but with a certain
intention to approach serious matters. "The royal suite is charming."
"Remember I'm a married man," said DeLancy, the incorrigible, with a
laugh. "Aren't you ashamed to try and lecture me?"
"Have you discovered a gold mine?" said Bojo.
"Oh! I got in on two or three good things last Summer," said Fred, who
broke off in some confusion at perceiving that he had just divulged to
his friend that he had been trying his fortune again in Wall Street.
"So that's it," said Bojo grimly. "Thought you'd sworn off."
"I never did," said DeLancy obstinately.
"It's not my affair, Fred," said Bojo finally. "Only do go slow, old
fellow; we're neither of us great manipulators and what comes slowly,
goes with a rush."
"Honest, Bojo, I am careful," said Fred with a show of conviction. "No
more ten per cent. margins and no more wild-cat chances. If I buy, it's
on good information, no plunging."
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, absolutely! I take the solemn oath!" said Fred with a face to
convince a meeting of theologians.
"And no margins?"
"Oh, conservative margins!"
"What do you call conservative?"
"Twenty-five points--twenty points naturally."
Bojo shook his head.
"What are you going to do, live here?"
"Of course not. We are looking around for an apartment for the Winter."
Bojo wanted to know what Louise intended, whether she had made up her
mind to leave the stage or not, but he did not know quite how to
approach the subject. As he studied DeLancy, he thought he looked
irrepressibly happy and indifferent to what lay ahead. He wondered if
Fred had made any approaches to his old friends with a view to their
accepting his wife.
"Will Louise stay here too?" he asked finally.
"Naturally."
"Is--is she giving up her career?" he said hesitatingly.
DeLancy looked rather embarrassed. He did not reply at first.
"I have left that to Louise herself. It's her decision. For the present
nothing is settled, not as yet."
Bojo felt the embarrassment that possessed him. He had come to ask a
score of questions. He started to leave with the feeling that he had
found out nothing. At the noise of his going, Louise came out of the
room with her hair down. Probably she had been listening. She said
good-by to him with extra cordiality, with an ironical look in her eyes.
"Mind you look us up after."
"Yes, yes."
Fred accompanied him to the elevator.
"As soon as we are settled we'll have a spree," he said with an attempt
at the old gaiety.
"Of course."
Bojo went off shrugging his shoulders, saying to himself, "Where will it
all end?"
During the Summer a marked change had come over industrial conditions, a
feeling of something ominous was in the air, a vague and undefined
threat impending. At the factory a fifth of the machines were idle and
Garnett was moodily contemplating a general reduction in salaries. Bojo
scarcely paid any attention to Wall Street matters now, but he knew that
the movement downward of values had been slow and gradual and that
prophecies of dark days were current. Matters with Marsh were going
badly. Advertisers were deserting the paper, there had been several
minor strikes with costly readjustments. Roscoe seemed to have lost his
early enthusiasm, to be increasingly moody, impatient and quick to take
offense. The reasons given for the business depression were many, over
capitalization, timidity of the small investors due to the exposure of
great corporations, distrust of radical political reforms. Whatever the
causes, the receding tide had come. People were apprehensive,
dispirited, talking poverty. Granning held that the country was paying
for the sins of the great financial adventurers and the cost of the
giddy structures they had thrown up. Marsh from the knowledge of his
newspaper world, held that below all was the coalescing power of great
banking systems, arrayed against the government on one side and on the
other, waiting their opportunity to crush the new-risen financial idea
of the Trust Company organized to deal in speculative ventures denied to
them. When Bojo in his simplicity asked why in a great growing nation of
boundless resources, a panic should ever be necessary, each sought to
explain with confusing logic which did not convince at all. Only from it
he gathered that above the great productive mechanism of the nation was
an artificial structure, in the possession of powerful groups able to
control the sources of credit on which the sources of production depend.
Four days after he had read in the newspapers the account of Doris's
wedding to Boskirk, about seven o'clock in the evening, while he was
waiting for Roscoe to call for him to go out to dinner, Sweeney, the
Jap, brought him a card.
It was from Patsie, hastily scribbled across, "I am outside. Can you
come and see me?"
"Where is she? Outside?" he said all in a flutter. Sweeney informed him
that she was waiting in an automobile.
He guessed that something serious must have happened and hurried down.
Patsie's face was at the window, watching impatiently. When she saw him
she relaxed momentarily with a sigh of relief.
"Why, Patsie, what's wrong?" he said instantly, taking her hand.
"You can come? It's important."
"Of course."
He jumped in and the car made off.
"Tell him to drive through the Park."
He transmitted the order. And then turned to look at her.
"I am so worried!" she said at once, gazing into his eyes, with eyes
that held an indefinable fear.
He had not relinquished her hand since he had seated himself. He pressed
it strongly, fighting back the desire to take her in his arms, that came
to him with the spectacle of her misery. There flashed through his mind
the details of his final parting with Doris and her ominous declaration
of the ruin impending over her father. He had only half believed it then
but now it flashed across his memory with instant conviction.
"Your father is in trouble--financial trouble!" he said suddenly.
"How do you know?" she said amazed.
"Doris told me."
"Doris? When?" she said. She stiffened at the name, though he did not
notice the action.
"The last time I saw her--why, Drina, didn't you know? Why she came
down, why she saw me and asked to be released--didn't you know her
reason?"
"I know nothing. Do you mean to say that she--" she paused as though
overwhelmed at the thought, "that then she knew Dad was facing ruin?"
"Knew? Why, your father told her!-- Doris and your mother! You didn't
know?"
"No."
"You weren't told afterward?"
"No, no--not a word."
Rapidly he recounted the details of the scene, failing in his excitement
to notice how divided was her interest, between the knowledge of what
was threatening her father, and what bore upon the situation between
Doris and himself.
"Then it was Doris who broke it!" she said suddenly and a shudder went
through her body.
He checked himself, saw clear and answered impetuously.
"Yes, she did--that's true. But let me tell the truth also. I never
would have married her--never--never! I never in all my life felt such
relief--yes, such absolute happiness as that night when I walked away
free. I did not love her. I had not for a long, long time. I pitied her.
I believed that through her love for me a great change was coming in
her--for the best. And so it had. I pitied her. I was afraid of doing
harm. That was all. She knew it, Drina. You can't believe I cared--you
must have known!"
"And yet--yet," she began, hesitatingly, and stopped.
"Don't hold anything back," he said impulsively. "We mustn't let
anything stand between us. Say anything you want. Better that."
"What I couldn't understand," she said at last, with an effort, in which
her hurt pride was evident--"that afternoon--when you gave back the
money to Dad--after what you said to me-- Oh! how can I say it."
"You thought that I was going to tell the truth to Doris and break the
engagement. That was it, wasn't it?"
"Yes," she said, covering her face, in terror that she could have said
such a thing, and yet her whole being hanging on his answer--"I couldn't
understand--afterwards."
"I came out of the library to make an end of everything and before I
knew it, it was Doris who had changed everything. She had listened. She
had heard all. She imagined she was in love for the first time. She
begged me not to turn from her, to give her another chance. I was
caught, what was I to do?"
"She loves you," she said breathlessly.
"She only imagines it. She only plays with that idea."
"No, no! she loves you," she said in a tone of great suffering.
"But, Drina," he said, aghast at her inconsistency, "it was you who came
to me--who begged me to marry Doris--how can you forget that?"
She burst into tears.
"What! You are jealous!--jealous of her!" he cried with a great hope in
his voice, his hand going out to her.
She stiffened suddenly and drew back, frightened into her corner.
"No, I'm not jealous," she said furiously. "Only hurt--terribly hurt."
This sudden change left him bewildered. He felt it unjustified,
inconsistent and a reproach was on his lips.
In the end he quieted himself and said, forcing himself to speak like a
stranger:
"This, I suppose, is not what you wanted to say to me?"
Instantly her alarm overcame her defiant attitude.
"No, no. I am terribly worried. I want your help, oh! so much."
She extended her hand timidly as though in apology, but still offended,
he withdrew his, saying:
"Anything I can do and you need not fear that I'll take advantage of
it!"
"Oh!" she shrank back and then in a moment said, "Bojo, forgive me-- I
am very cruel-- I know it. Will you forgive me?"
"I forgive you," he said at last, trembling at the sweetness of her
voice, resolved whatever the temptation, to show her that he could
control himself.
"Bojo, everything is going against Dad--everything. Doris must come back
and we must get word to Dolly. He needs all the help we can give him."
"Are you sure?" he said, amazed.
"Oh! I know."
"But your father has millions and in the Pittsburgh & New Orleans he
made at least ten more. How can it be?"
"I overheard-- I listened and then--then mother told me."
"When?"
"The night after the wedding--that in another month we might be
ruined--that I--I ought to look to the future."
"Oh, like Doris!" he cried.
"Yes, that was what she meant," she said with a shudder. "Think of it,
my mother, my own mother. Then I went to him--to Dad--but he would tell
me nothing--only laughed and said everything was all right, but I knew!
I don't know how or why, but I knew from the look in his eyes."
"Yet I can't believe it," he said incredulously.
"Oh! I feel so alone and so helpless," she cried, twisting her hands.
"Something must be done and I don't know how to do it. Bojo, you must
help me--you must tell me. It's money--he can't get money-- I believe no
one will lend it to him." Suddenly she turned on him, caught his
arm,--"You say Doris knew, Dad told her--before the wedding!"
"Yes--because she told me."
"Oh! that is too terrible," she cried, "and knowing it she allowed him
to make her a gift of half a million."
"He did that? You are certain?"
"Absolutely. I saw the bonds."
"But then that proves everything is all right," he cried joyfully.
"You don't know Dad," she said, shaking her head mournfully. "Bojo, we
must get Doris back, she may do things for you that she won't do for any
one else-- Oh! yes, you don't know. Then I have something--a quarter of
a million. I want to turn it into cash. He won't take it from me if he
knew. But you might deposit it to his credit, make him believe some one
did it anonymously--couldn't that be done?"
He raised her hand with a sudden swelling in his throat and kissed it,
murmuring something incoherent.
"That is nothing to do, nothing," she said, shaking her head.
"I wish I could go to him," he said doubtfully.
"You can. You can. I know Dad believes you, trusts you. Oh! if you
would.
"Of course I will and at once," he said joyfully. He leaned out the
window and gave the order. "Heavens, child, we've forgotten all about
dinner. I shall have to invite myself." He took her hand, patting it as
though to calm her. "It may not be so bad as you imagine. We'll
telegraph Doris to-night, the Boskirks can do a lot. Of course they'll
help. Then there's your mother--she has money of her own, I know."
"That's what I'm afraid of--mother," she said in a whisper.
"What do you mean?"
She shook her head.
"Don't ask me. I shouldn't have said it. And yet--and yet--"
"We are almost there," he said hurriedly. He wanted to say something to
her, revolting at the discipline he had imposed on himself, something
from the heart and yet something at which she would not take offense. He
hesitated and stammered--"Thank you for coming to me. You know--you
understand, don't you?"
She turned, her glance rested on his a long moment, she started as
though to say something, stopped and turned hurriedly away, but brief as
the moment had been, a feeling of meltable content came over him. The
next moment they came to a stop. In the vestibule she bade him wait in
the little parlor and went in ahead to the library. He had picked up a
paper and paced up and down, scanning it anxiously, with brief glances
down the wide luxurious salons and at the liveried servants who seemed
to move nervously, all eyes and ears, scenting danger in the air. The
accent of fear was in the headlines even. He was staring at a caption
telling of rumored suspensions and prophecies of ill when Patsie came
tripping back.
[Illustration: "'He wants to see you now' she said"]
"It's all right. He wants to see you now," she said, happiness in her
eyes, holding out her hand to lead him.