When Donald Rogers left his apartment in One Hundred and Tenth Street
the next morning, he had an unaccountable feeling that something out of
the ordinary, something of a nature unforeseen and menacing, would occur
to him before the day was over. Being of a somewhat matter-of-fact turn
of mind, however, he laughed at his fears, and attributed them to a
slight attack of the great American disease, brought on by over-much
smoking. Perhaps, had he been a Frenchman, and a magpie or a hare had
suddenly crossed his path, he might have been tempted to take off his
hat to the one, or to bow politely to the other; as it was, he put
forebodings out of his mind, as unworthy a practical man of affairs. The
uncomfortable feeling persisted, however, in spite of his optimistic
efforts to escape from it in the depths of his morning paper, all during
the long ride down-town in the subway, and was forgotten only in the
complexities of his morning's mail.
The unfortunate discussion with his wife, Edith, the night before, which
was the real cause of his depression, he had religiously put out of his
mind, attributing her discontent to some purely temporary irritability
which would soon be forgotten.
They had neither of them referred to the matter at breakfast; Donald had
been in his usual hurry, Edith occupied with Bobbie, who had a habit of
awakening somewhat querulous and difficult to please. Her manner had
been serene, if a trifle distant and reserved. Donald felt that already
the storm had passed, and dismissed the matter from his mind.
He spent the forenoon busily occupied in his office. It was not much of
an office, as such things go in New York, being merely a small private
room with a larger and lighter one adjoining it, but it sufficed for all
the needs of his business, which was that of a consulting mechanical
engineer.
The inner room, which was the smaller of the two, served to receive his
clients, of which there were not many; the outer contained the
draughting tables and his assistant. Yet, small and plain as these rooms
were, they reflected to a surprising extent the character of the man.
There were no attempts at decoration; no concessions to any sense of
the artistic; everything was plain, solid, durable, honest, like the man
himself. Only the photographs of Edith, his wife, and Bobbie, his little
boy, in a silver frame upon the flat-topped oak desk, bespoke the
sentiment which was so deep and vital a part of Donald Rogers' nature.
Existence had not dealt over kindly with this descendant of the dour
land of Wallace and Bruce, but he met it with high courage, and head up,
as befitted one of his race. Born in a small town along the upper
reaches of the Hudson, he had known the love of a father only long
enough to clutch his fingers in the first futile efforts to face the
world upon two feet, instead of on all fours; the mother, however, had
survived longer, and it was to her that Donald owed the sturdy lessons
in the eternal rightness of things that underlay and governed all his
actions.
He was sixteen when she was laid beside her long-expectant husband, and
Donald, her only child, went out into the world with a very small
patrimony and a very great grief. Yet this sweet-faced woman, locked in
her long leaden sleep, was not dead; her faith, her courage, her high
ideals, lived and breathed in her son, and no act of his life but
showed in some way, however slight, their purifying effect.
Donald Rogers' father had been a steam engineer without a college
education; his son determined to follow in his footsteps with one, and,
with this purpose strong within him, gathered together the small store
of worldly goods with which the fates had endowed him and went to New
York and the engineering course at Columbia. It took him five years
to complete the course, partly because his early education had been
somewhat incomplete, partly owing to the necessity under which he
labored, of earning sufficient money, as he went along, to piece out
the fragments of his small inheritance and maintain himself. This he
did by doing draughting work at night; it was hard on the eyes, but the
experience helped him in his profession. At twenty-two he was graduated
with honors; these, with his diploma, constituted his stock in trade;
his weapons with which to win fame and fortune.
Five years of employment in subordinate positions had not only given him
practical experience, but had taught him the futility of expecting the
aforementioned fame and fortune while working on a salary; his courage,
his savings and some staunch business friends all favored the idea of
launching out for himself. The results had been encouraging; he now,
after eight years, had a substantial, if small, practice, and an
unshaken belief in himself and his future.
It was about the time he first opened his office as consulting engineer
that he had met Edith Pope, and they were married within a year. She was
a girl of unusual beauty, and through both inheritance and training
quite his opposite. Perhaps it was because of this that she had
attracted him.
Her father had been a real-estate dealer, and through his ability and
industry had made during his somewhat short business career a large
income. His wife, on the other hand, had shown such ability and industry
in spending it that, when he died, which he did about the time that
Edith was just entering her 'teens, he left only enough to provide a
meager living for herself, her mother and her sister Alice, two years
her junior. Mrs. Pope had never been able to accustom herself to the
blow; she lived in a constant atmosphere of past glories and was never
tired of recounting to her daughters all the comforts she had enjoyed
when her "dear J. B.," as she mournfully designated her deceased better
half, was alive. Never a day passed, but Edith and her sister were
warned against the evils and dangers of marrying a man without money;
to some extent it might have appeared that Mrs. Pope hoped to regain,
through the matrimonial successes of her daughters, those luxuries of
existence which she fondly believed were, to her, absolute necessities.
Whether or not her children paid any serious attention to her advice it
would be difficult to say; perhaps the best answer to the question lay
in the fact that, when Edith met Donald in the boarding-house on Tenth
Street, which was for the time being their mutual home, she straightway
fell head over heels in love with him, and married him before the year
was out, in spite of her mother's strenuous objections. That was eight
years ago, and, if Edith Rogers was not entirely reconciled to living in
a Harlem flat and doing her own housework, she at least found a large
measure of compensation in her little boy, Bobbie, who was now six, and
a darling, as even his grandmother was forced grudgingly to admit. Her
assent was grudging because Mrs. Pope had never forgiven her son-in-law
for depriving her of her daughter; one matrimonial asset thus rudely
snatched away forced her to concentrate all her hopes upon Alice, and
that young lady, at the age of rising twenty-six, had begun to show
signs of extreme restiveness, possibly due to an inward conviction
that even a Harlem flat and a four-by-six kitchenette possesses some
advantages not to be found in boarding-houses of the less-expensive
variety, and that a real live man with a living income is better than an
old maid's dreams of a possible, but hitherto undisclosed, millionaire.
Emerson Hall, a friend of Donald's, whom she had met a few months
before, assisted her greatly in arriving at these not unusual
conclusions.
It was long after one o'clock when Donald Rogers, absorbed in a problem
of power transmission, bethought himself of luncheon. One was his usual
hour; he dropped his calculations, seized his hat, and in a moment
was threading his way through the never ending throngs of lower
Broadway, on his way to a little chop house in John Street, long famous
for its English mutton chops and cream ale.
As he came abreast of the Singer Building, he felt someone grasp his arm
from behind and heard a cheery voice, with a familiar ring about it,
calling to him. He turned and looked into the handsome, smiling face of
a tall bronzed man, whose costume indicated clearly that he hailed from
the West.
"Billy West!" he exclaimed, gripping the new-comer's hand joyfully.
"Where on earth did you drop from? I thought you were in Colorado."
"I was, until four days ago. Thought I'd come East for awhile and look
the old town over. How's everything?" His glance was full of smiling
inquiry. "Making lots of money?"
"Not so much that I have to sit up nights thinking how to spend it,"
replied Rogers, a trifle bitterly. "Had your lunch?"
"No. Didn't want to eat alone. I've been away so long I hardly know a
soul in this blessed burg."
Rogers took his arm. "Come along with me," he said. "I'm just on my
way."
West nodded. "Got to see my lawyers some time to-day, but later will do
just as well." In five minutes they were seated in the chop house,
ordering luncheon.
"How are you getting along out there among the miners?" laughed Donald,
as he dismissed the waiter with their order. "Hope you like it better
than doing laboratory work down in Jersey. Ought to be wonderful
opportunities for a man, out there." He paused for a moment, thoughtful.
"You know I always used to say, when we were in college, that I meant to
go West some day. I've never got there, though. New York has become a
habit, I'm afraid. Can't seem to break away from it."
West looked at his friend with a faintly quizzical smile, and hesitated
for a moment, as though he almost feared to tell the other what had come
into his mind. Then he leaned across the table, and his face suddenly
became grave. "Don," he said earnestly, "the luck I've had out there has
been so wonderful, so almost unbelievable, that, even though it happened
nearly two years ago, I still can hardly realize that it's true."
"Strike a gold mine?" inquired Rogers, with a laugh.
"That's exactly what I did do, and believe me, Don, it's some mine. We
capitalized it last year at a million, of which yours truly, owns half,
and it paid over five per cent. from the start. I haven't got used to
figuring up my income yet, but just at present I think it's running
pretty close to thirty thousand a year, and more coming." He leaned
back in his chair with a satisfied smile. "I'm vice-president of the
concern. The Lone Star mine, it's called, up on the Little Ash river;
but I haven't anything much to do with the management--leave all that to
the Boston crowd that put in the money. They're a fine, conservative
lot of fellows, with plenty of experience, and I know my interests are
perfectly safe in their hands. So you see, I'm a sort of a gentleman of
leisure just at present, with plenty of money to spend, and nobody in
particular to spend it on, so I thought I'd take a run down to little
old New York and put in a year or so getting acquainted with some of my
old friends. I was on my way to my lawyers, as I said, when I met you,
and, after attending to a little matter of business, I was coming right
up to your office to see you. I looked up your address in the telephone
book."
Donald, who by this time had succeeded in digesting this remarkable
piece of news, reached across the table and took his friend's hand.
"Billy," he said, with a look which left no doubt as to the sincerity
of his feelings, "congratulations from the bottom of my heart."
"Thanks, old man. I knew you would be glad to know about my good luck."
He attacked the chop, which the waiter set before him with a flourish.
"And now tell me about yourself. How's your wife, and the boy--it was a
boy, wasn't it? The happy event occurred just before I went West, and
I'm not exactly sure." He flashed on Rogers one of those brilliant
smiles which had always made him loved by both sexes, and particularly
the one in petticoats.
"Edith is very well, and the boy is fine. I don't wonder you did not
remember. They will be delighted to see you. Why not come up to dinner
to-night. We can't offer you a feast, but you won't mind taking pot
luck."
"Well, I should say not. I was hoping you would ask me. You can't
imagine how lost I feel in this town. I suppose it would be different if
I had any family, but you know I haven't even a second cousin I can call
my own. I've often thought of you and Edith. You know that she might
have been Mrs. West, once, years ago, if you hadn't stepped in and taken
her away from me. I'd have been jealous of anyone but you, Don, but I
guess the best man won." He laughed with a hearty frankness, and took up
his mug of ale. "Here's to the youngster. May he live long and
prosper."
Donald drained his glass. "I suppose you will be busy for a couple of
hours," he said, "with your legal matters. Why not come up to my office
when you get through--I'm in the Columbia Building, you know--and we'll
go up-town together?"
"I'll do it. We can stop at my hotel on the way, and give me a chance to
clean up a bit. I only got in this morning on the sleeper, you know, and
I feel a bit grubby."
Some half-hour later they were making their way slowly toward Broadway.
"What a great town it is, after all!" remarked West, as they turned the
corner at John Street. "Every time a fellow goes away for a few years
they seem to build it all over again before he gets back." He turned to
look at the towering mass of the Singer Building. "That's a new one on
me. Wouldn't it make some of my friends back in Colorado have cricks in
their backs?"
"It is a wonderful city," replied Rogers grimly. "I don't think I should
ever care about living anywhere else, but the man who wins out in it has
got to deliver the goods. Big as it is, there is no room in it for
failures." He waved his hand to West as the latter turned into Wall
Street. "See you around four-thirty. So long."
"I'll be there. Wait for me if I'm a little late," was the reply, as the
two separated.
Donald went back to his plain little office and his power-transmission
problem with a curious feeling of futility. Thirteen years of hard work
had given him but little more than the right to fight that never ceasing
battle with the grim city which could excuse anything but failure.
West--pleasure-loving Billy West--who from his freshman days had looked
upon the world as little more than an amazing joke, had by one stroke of
fortune suddenly found all the pleasures, all the luxuries that life
contained, at his feet. He did not envy West this good fortune, he was
too staunch a friend for that, but he thought of Edith, and their little
up-town flat, and as her tired face rose before him he suffered the
pangs of that greatest of all forms of poverty, the inability to do for
those we love.