THAT night after supper Tommy, who felt that his joy over the new car
was almost too great to be strictly moral, told Bill all about it and
saw Bill's flashing eyes at the thought of a car to experiment with, a
lack that he had often bemoaned. Tommy thought Bill was entitled to some
pleasure on his own account and, wishing to share his luck, he said,
earnestly:
“I can't stand it any longer, Bill; you've simply got to take the fifty
dollars. I'll lend it to you or give it to you, or we'll go in cahoots
or on any basis you want; but if you don't invent my kerosene-carburetor
I'll bust.”
“Yes, but how will I feel if nothing comes out of it?” said Bill,
gloomily.
“What about my own feelings, you pin-head! I'll feel a thousand times
worse than you, if that's any comfort to you. I've mapped out my selling
campaign. Why, I've been selling a thousand kerosene-cars a day for two
weeks!”
“Yes, but--”
“You can't be an inventor. All inventors are dead sure of getting there
if you only give them time and money. And here I'm giving you capital
and from four to five Sundays a month!”
“Don't be funny!”
“In the event of honorable defeat I'll sell their measly gasoline-cars
instead of our kerosene wonders, so I'm all right. Will you take the
money, Bill?”
“Yes!” shouted Bill, and frowned furiously. “By heck! I just will!”
“Right! Are you sure you can get the generator for the money?”
“Yes, I've got him down to fifty. We'll split even on the patent.”
“And your work?” said Tommy, shaking his head.
“And yours?” shrieked Bill, excitedly. “Whose idea was it? I won't go on
any other basis.”
“You are a d--d fool,” said Tommy, severely.
“So are you!” retorted Bill, so pugnaciously that Tommy laughed and
said, soothingly:
“Let's not hoodoo the thing by counting the chickens before they are
hatched. You wait here.”
Tommy went into his room, unlocked his trunk, and found the little
package of gold coins his mother had wrapped up. He read the faint but
still legible inscription: “For Tommy's first scrape.”
In that shabby room in a strange city she came to him, the mother he had
never known, who had paid for his life with her own, the mother who had
loved him so much, whose love began before he was bora.
“Poor mother!” he muttered. And he tried to see--in vain!--a mother's
smile on her lips and the blessed light in her eyes. He could not see
them, but he felt them, for he felt himself enveloped by her love as
though she had thrown a warm cloak about his chilled soul. A great
yearning came over him to love her.
He raised the little package to his lips instinctively and kissed the
writing. And then, not instinctively, but deliberately, that his love
might go from him to her, he kissed it again and again, until the sense
of loss came and his eyes filled with tears for the mother he now not
only loved, but did not wish to lose.
She had loved him without knowing him. She had planned for him--plans
that had come to naught notwithstanding his father's efforts to carry
them out.
“Poor father!” he said. He heard his own words. He understood now that
his duty to his mother was his duty to his father. He must plan for his
father as his mother had planned for him. His father must come first in
everything! It was his father, not Tommy Leigh, whom he must save from
disgrace.
The money must go to New York. It was not much, but it would help. It
was as much as he could save in thirty weeks.
He hesitated. He saw his duty to his father. Then with the package still
unbroken in his hand he went back to Bill's room.
“Bill!” said Tommy. His throat was dry. It made his voice husky.
“What's the matter? Is it stolen?” asked Bill in alarm. Tommy's voice
had told him something was wrong.
“No,” said Tommy. “Only I--I was thinking--” He paused.
“Cold feet?” Bill smiled a heroic smile of resignation, the triumph of
friendship. He was blaming luck and no one else.
Tommy saw the smile and divined the loyalty with a pang. Bill was a man!
It really was Bill's money; the promise had been passed. He had been
guilty of a boyish impulse. This was his first scrape! He heard his
mother say he must not be thoughtless again.
“No,” said Tommy, firmly, “but--Let me tell you, Bill. My uncle gave
this money to my mother before I was born--one hundred dollars in gold.
She saved it for me.”
He showed Bill what she had written. Bill held the package near the
light and read slowly: “For Tommy's first scrape!” He looked at Tommy
uncomfortably.
“She died when I was born,” said Tommy, who wanted to tell Bill
everything.
“You can't use it,” said Bill, with decision. “Certainly I can.”
“Not much; I won't take it!”
“You'll have to,” said Tommy.
Bill shook his head.
“I'm sure,” said Tommy, seriously, “it's all right to use it for the
work.”
“If it was mine I wouldn't even open the package if it was to save me
from jail,” said Bill.
“Well, I will, to save myself from the insane-asylum,” said Tommy.
He hesitated, then he opened the package with fingers that trembled
slightly. There were ten gold eagles. Tommy counted out five and wrapped
up the other five. “Here, Bill,” he said.
“No!” shouted Bill. His face was flushed. He put his hands in his
pockets determinedly, so he couldn't take the money.
“There they are, on the table. Now lose them!” said Tommy, cuttingly.
He walked out of Bill's room, put the package with the remaining fifty
dollars in his trunk and locked it. He wished he might save the original
coins. It struck him he might borrow the fifty dollars from Mr. Thompson
and give the gold coins as collateral. A fine notion! But to carry it
out he would have to explain.
It was fully ten minutes before he went back to Bill's room. The coins
were on the table. Tommy thought of a jest, of a scolding, of what he
ought to say to Bill. In the end he said, very quietly:
“Please put it away, Bill. And I'd like you to come with me. We'll go
out for a trolley ride.”
“All right,” said Bill. He hesitated, then as Tommy started to go out
Bill put the money in his pocket-book and followed Tommy on tiptoe.
The two boys went out of the house in silence. They boarded an open car
at the corner, sat together, rode to the end of the line, rode back,
walked to the house and entered--all in silence. They went into Bill's
room. They had been sitting there fully five minutes when Bill suddenly
said:
“Say, Tommy?”
“What?”
“You know,” said Bill, timidly, “a kerosene-engine won't start cold.”
“I know it,” said Tommy, who had read up on the subject just as he used
to bone at college just before examinations.
“I've a notion--”
“Have you tried it?” asked Tommy, sternly business-like.
“Not yet, but I dope it out that--”
“Nothing on paper; no mouth inventing,” interrupted Tommy, firmly.
“Practical experiments.”
“You're right,” said Bill, with moody acquiescence. “I wish to heaven
I didn't have to go to the shop. Some things can't be done by one man
alone.” He looked at Tommy and hesitated.
Tommy also hesitated. Then he said: “If you think I can help I'll be
glad to, Bill. But you must do exactly as you wish. I don't want to
pry--”
“You big chump!” interrupted Bill, “I've been afraid to ask you. You
know I don't hit it right every time, and you may lose patience with me
and--”
“Tut-tut, me child!” said Tommy.
“Well, I'm only warning you.”
“Bill, I'd like to talk all night, but I guess we'd better go to bed.”
“I sha'n't sleep a wink all night,” Bill spoke accusingly.
“Same here,” retorted Tommy. He was in bed trying not to think about
Bill's carburetor and the new cars he would sell by the thousand, when
his door opened.
Bill stuck his head into the room. “Tommy!” he whispered.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I--I am much obliged.”
“Did you wake me up to tell me that?”
“Yes. And I have a sneaking notion--”
“My business hours, Mr. Byrnes, are five a.m. to ten p.m.,” interrupted
Tommy, because what he really wanted was to listen to Bill all night,
and he knew he had to fight against the feeling that he was a kid
tickled to death with a new toy.
“All right,” said Bill, meekly; “but I wanted to tell you I was much
obliged--”
“You have. Now go to sleep.”
“I can't!”
“Then go to blazes.”
“It's your fault!”
“Good night, Bill.”
“Good night, Tommy. Say, a coil in the manifold intake--”
Tommy snored loudly. Bill's sigh was almost as audible. Then the door
closed softly.