"You don't know what to do?" I spluttered. "Then why on earth did you
speak as though you had a dozen buyers waiting in a row?"
"Because that's business," he tried to shout me down. "That devil will
have more confidence in us if we let him go back on his bargain than if
he made a lot of money on it. Don't you know human nature?"
"Not human nature like that," I retorted bitterly. "Tell me what you are
going to do about it."
"Let's get on the telephone, both of us," he spoke cheerfully, "and each
call up as many people as we can and offer them those bonds before that
weak sister gets here."
"A desperate remedy," I growled irritably. "Let me see you do it."
Fred lighted a cigar and gazed out of the window. When he turned his
face was suave and benignant. He looked like nothing so much as a man
about to fill a row of Christmas stockings. Then he betook himself to
the telephone. In a cheerful, friendly, lingering voice he began to
offer his gift to one after another of his list as though an inward and
spiritual grace were moving him irresistibly to benefaction. His face
was on a broad grin even under a series of repeated refusals, and I
confess to experiencing a sort of truculent joy at what I believed to be
his discomfiture. His accents, however, never lost their velvety
quality nor did he betray by a single note any trace of disappointment.
On the contrary he was warming to his work with a keen gusto. On a
sudden the young woman at the telephone outside informed him that he was
being called. He listened.
"Mr. Smith?" he answered mildly. "Hello! Bringing us those bonds?
What? Decided to keep them, after all? Well, well," with a laugh, "the
Lord be with you then, Mr. Smith. We could have sold them ten times
over since you first called me. No, no. It doesn't matter. I'll find
something else for the others. You're mighty wise, Mr. Smith--I'll hand
that to you. No, it's all right. Come and see us. Good-by--good-by,
sir!"
When he turned away from the telephone the perspiration beaded his
forehead and puffy cheeks and he grinned genially.
"Whew," he whistled, passing a handkerchief over his face. "That was
great fun. But why do they want to break in on the innocent morning
with things like that! Well, that's how it is, Randolph, my boy," he
added lightly and turned away to other things. In his way Fred compels
my admiration. For this is only one instance of many, one thread in the
texture of our daily life. How I long to read a few pages of "Urn
Burial" in order to forget it all!
It is too soon to know whether or not we are a success. But we are each
of us drawing a small salary and to me that is an immediate help.
What a curious jumble is our life! Forces strange and awe-inspiring,
the very stars in their courses seem to be defending Laura's children,
lest I should do them an injury. But in order to keep them and rear
them I must resort to a kind of olla-podrida of backstairs shifts and
devices, such as I have described, that make my cheek burn. But I
suppose it is as Dibdin says: We are all the ministers and retinue, be
it in court dress or in tinsel and livery, of that exalted prince of the
world, the child. For me, however, it is still a struggle to grasp that
ineluctable truth. Perhaps as a reward for this, as a sort of pourboire
of Fate, I shall become gruesomely rich, a kind of Maecenas, an orgulous
figure among scholars, and finance some new Tudor or early English texts
or latter-day collections of the classics?
My pipe has gone out. I have taken to puffing a pipe in a manner that
would delight the soul of Dibdin. Dibdin! Every day I expect to hear
from him, but still my expectation is vain. The children are all abed
and I sit here filled with a sense that I am responsible for all of
them, sleeping and waking, for their nourishment and existence, for all
this machinery that keeps the six of us going, and the thought fills me
with awe--and yet there is a kind of pleasant sense of pride in it, too.
Dibdin would say that I reminded him of a broody hen, and Dibdin would
be right. A broody hen is a model of responsibility for all mankind.
Yet though I cannot look with young-eyed confidence upon all of this, or
upon my enterprise with Fred, I can hardly resist a feeling that
something of the youth and manhood I have spent as a solitary among
books, something stirring and effervescent that I have suppressed, is
struggling for an outlet. Fred's methods of business, though I wince at
some of them, fill me with gusts of irresistible laughter. His constant
horseplay and good humor are infectious.
To-day he came to me with a grave countenance and informed me that
Sampson and Company, a house from which we sometimes buy a few bonds,
desired to know whether we would join them in underwriting the Roumanian
loan.
"And what did you say?" I inquired with equal gravity.
"Naturally I told him I must consult my partner."
"What did they say to that?"
"'Oh, sure,' he said, 'but it isn't a large loan--only fifteen millions.
All we want you to take is about three millions.'"