"No; I really couldn't have afforded that."
"I see. Then they've got to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a
month."
Mr. Dagonet remained pleasantly unmoved. "Does it cost anything like
that to buy your daughter's dresses?"
A subterranean chuckle agitated the lower folds of Mr. Spragg's
waistcoat.
"I might put him in the way of something--I guess he's smart enough."
Mr. Dagonet made a gesture of friendly warning. "It will pay us both in
the end to keep him out of business," he said, rising as if to show that
his mission was accomplished.
The results of this friendly conference had been more serious than
Mr. Spragg could have foreseen--and the victory remained with his
antagonist. It had not entered into Mr. Spragg's calculations that he
would have to give his daughter any fixed income on her marriage. He
meant that she should have the "handsomest" wedding the New York press
had ever celebrated, and her mother's fancy was already afloat on a sea
of luxuries--a motor, a Fifth Avenue house, and a tiara that should
out-blaze Mrs. Van Degen's; but these were movable benefits, to be
conferred whenever Mr. Spragg happened to be "on the right side" of the
market. It was a different matter to be called on, at such short notice,
to bridge the gap between young Marvell's allowance and Undine's
requirements; and her father's immediate conclusion was that the
engagement had better be broken off. Such scissions were almost painless
in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's
pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better.
"You'd better wait awhile and look round again," was the way he had put
it to her at the opening of the talk of which, even now, he could not
recall the close without a tremor.
Undine, when she took his meaning, had been terrible. Everything had
gone down before her, as towns and villages went down before one of the
tornadoes of her native state. Wait awhile? Look round? Did he suppose
she was marrying for MONEY? Didn't he see it was all a question, now
and here, of the kind of people she wanted to "go with"? Did he want
to throw her straight back into the Lipscomb set, to have her marry a
dentist and live in a West Side flat? Why hadn't they stayed in Apex, if
that was all he thought she was fit for? She might as well have married
Millard Binch, instead of handing him over to Indiana Frusk! Couldn't
her father understand that nice girls, in New York, didn't regard
getting married like going on a buggy-ride? It was enough to ruin a
girl's chances if she broke her engagement to a man in Ralph Marvell's
set. All kinds of spiteful things would be said about her, and she would
never be able to go with the right people again. They had better go back
to Apex right off--it was they and not SHE who had wanted to leave Apex,
anyhow--she could call her mother to witness it. She had always, when it
came to that, done what her father and mother wanted, but she'd given
up trying to make out what they were after, unless it was to make her
miserable; and if that was it, hadn't they had enough of it by this
time? She had, anyhow. But after this she meant to lead her own life;
and they needn't ask her where she was going, or what she meant to do,
because this time she'd die before she told them--and they'd made life
so hateful to her that she only wished she was dead already.
Mr. Spragg heard her out in silence, pulling at his beard with one
sallow wrinkled hand, while the other dragged down the armhole of his
waistcoat. Suddenly he looked up and said: "Ain't you in love with the
fellow, Undie?"
The girl glared back at him, her splendid brows beetling like an
Amazon's. "Do you think I'd care a cent for all the rest of it if I
wasn't?"
"Well, if you are, you and he won't mind beginning in a small way."
Her look poured contempt on his ignorance. "Do you s'pose I'd drag him
down?" With a magnificent gesture she tore Marvell's ring from her
finger. "I'll send this back this minute. I'll tell him I thought he
was a rich man, and now I see I'm mistaken--" She burst into shattering
sobs, rocking her beautiful body back and forward in all the abandonment
of young grief; and her father stood over her, stroking her shoulder and
saying helplessly: "I'll see what I can do, Undine--"
All his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, Mr. Spragg had been
called on by his womenkind to "see what he could do"; and the seeing had
almost always resulted as they wished. Undine did not have to send back
her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by
what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother's
assurance that "father had fixed everything all right."
Mr. Spragg accepted the situation also. A son-in-law who expected to
be pensioned like a Grand Army veteran was a phenomenon new to his
experience; but if that was what Undine wanted she should have it. Only
two days later, however, he was met by a new demand--the young people
had decided to be married "right off," instead of waiting till June.
This change of plan was made known to Mr. Spragg at a moment when he was
peculiarly unprepared for the financial readjustment it necessitated. He
had always declared himself able to cope with any crisis if Undine and
her mother would "go steady"; but he now warned them of his inability to
keep up with the new pace they had set. Undine, not deigning to return
to the charge, had commissioned her mother to speak for her; and Mr.
Spragg was surprised to meet in his wife a firmness as inflexible as his
daughter's.
"I can't do it, Loot--can't put my hand on the cash," he had protested;
but Mrs. Spragg fought him inch by inch, her back to the wall--flinging
out at last, as he pressed her closer: "Well, if you want to know, she's
seen Elmer."
The bolt reached its mark, and her husband turned an agitated face on
her.
"Elmer? What on earth--he didn't come HERE?"
"No; but he sat next to her the other night at the theatre, and she's
wild with us for not having warned her."
Mr. Spragg's scowl drew his projecting brows together. "Warned her of
what? What's Elmer to her? Why's she afraid of Elmer Moffatt?"
"She's afraid of his talking."
"Talking? What on earth can he say that'll hurt HER?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mrs. Spragg wailed. "She's so nervous I can hardly
get a word out of her."
Mr. Spragg's whitening face showed the touch of a new fear. "Is she
afraid he'll get round her again--make up to her? Is that what she
means by 'talking'?" "I don't know, I don't know. I only know she is
afraid--she's afraid as death of him."
For a long interval they sat silently looking at each other while their
heavy eyes exchanged conjectures: then Mr. Spragg rose from his chair,
saying, as he took up his hat: "Don't you fret, Leota; I'll see what I
can do."
He had been "seeing" now for an arduous fortnight; and the strain on his
vision had resulted in a state of tension such as he had not undergone
since the epic days of the Pure Water Move at Apex. It was not his habit
to impart his fears to Mrs. Spragg and Undine, and they continued the
bridal preparations, secure in their invariable experience that, once
"father" had been convinced of the impossibility of evading their
demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his
womenkind need not concern themselves. Mr. Spragg, as he approached his
office on the morning in question, felt reasonably sure of fulfilling
these expectations; but he reflected that a few more such victories
would mean disaster.
He entered the vast marble vestibule of the Ararat Trust Building and
walked toward the express elevator that was to carry him up to his
office. At the door of the elevator a man turned to him, and he
recognized Elmer Moffatt, who put out his hand with an easy gesture.
Mr. Spragg did not ignore the gesture: he did not even withhold his
hand. In his code the cut, as a conscious sign of disapproval, did not
exist. In the south, if you had a grudge against a man you tried to
shoot him; in the west, you tried to do him in a mean turn in business;
but in neither region was the cut among the social weapons of offense.
Mr. Spragg, therefore, seeing Moffatt in his path, extended a lifeless
hand while he faced the young man scowlingly. Moffatt met the hand and
the scowl with equal coolness.
"Going up to your office? I was on my way there."
The elevator door rolled back, and Mr. Spragg, entering it, found his
companion at his side. They remained silent during the ascent to Mr.
Spragg's threshold; but there the latter turned to enquire ironically of
Moffatt: "Anything left to say?"
Moffatt smiled. "Nothing LEFT--no; I'm carrying a whole new line of
goods."
Mr. Spragg pondered the reply; then he opened the door and suffered
Moffatt to follow him in. Behind an inner glazed enclosure, with its one
window dimmed by a sooty perspective barred with chimneys, he seated
himself at a dusty littered desk, and groped instinctively for the
support of the scrap basket. Moffatt, uninvited, dropped into the
nearest chair, and Mr. Spragg said, after another silence: "I'm pretty
busy this morning."
"I know you are: that's why I'm here," Moffatt serenely answered. He
leaned back, crossing his legs, and twisting his small stiff moustache
with a plump hand adorned by a cameo.
"Fact is," he went on, "this is a coals-of-fire call. You think I owe
you a grudge, and I'm going to show you I'm not that kind. I'm going
to put you onto a good thing--oh, not because I'm so fond of you; just
because it happens to hit my sense of a joke."
While Moffatt talked Mr. Spragg took up the pile of letters on his desk
and sat shuffling them like a pack of cards. He dealt them deliberately
to two imaginary players; then he pushed them aside and drew out his
watch.
"All right--I carry one too," said the young man easily. "But you'll
find it's time gained to hear what I've got to say."
Mr. Spragg considered the vista of chimneys without speaking, and
Moffatt continued: "I don't suppose you care to hear the story of my
life, so I won't refer you to the back numbers. You used to say out in
Apex that I spent too much time loafing round the bar of the Mealey
House; that was one of the things you had against me. Well, maybe I
did--but it taught me to talk, and to listen to the other fellows too.
Just at present I'm one of Harmon B. Driscoll's private secretaries, and
some of that Mealey House loafing has come in more useful than any job I
ever put my hand to. The old man happened to hear I knew something about
the inside of the Eubaw deal, and took me on to have the information
where he could get at it. I've given him good talk for his money;
but I've done some listening too. Eubaw ain't the only commodity the
Driscolls deal in."
Mr. Spragg restored his watch to his pocket and shifted his drowsy gaze
from the window to his visitor's face.
"Yes," said Moffatt, as if in reply to the movement, "the Driscolls are
getting busy out in Apex. Now they've got all the street railroads in
their pocket they want the water-supply too--but you know that as well
as I do. Fact is, they've got to have it; and there's where you and I
come in."
Mr. Spragg thrust his hands in his waistcoat arm-holes and turned his
eyes back to the window.
"I'm out of that long ago," he said indifferently.
"Sure," Moffatt acquiesced; "but you know what went on when you were in
it."
"Well?" said Mr. Spragg, shifting one hand to the Masonic emblem on his
watch-chain.
"Well, Representative James J. Rolliver, who was in it with you, ain't
out of it yet. He's the man the Driscolls are up against. What d'you
know about him?"
Mr. Spragg twirled the emblem thoughtfully. "Driscoll tell you to come
here?"