Horace Chase Part 23

"Please tell her to bring me a spray of it. As soon as she can."

a.s.suring himself that the pony felt no curiosity about the absence of a road under his feet, Chase, with his leisurely step, went in search of his wife. He found her catching jessamine, which Walter, who had climbed into a wild-plum tree, was throwing down. She had already adorned herself with the blossoms, and when she saw her husband approaching she went to meet him, and wound a spray round his hat.

"Your sister wants some; she told me to tell you. She's back there a little way--on the left," said Chase. "Hullo! here comes a wounded hero;" for Petie Trone, Esq., had appeared, limping dolefully. "Never mind; I'll see to the little porpoise if you want to go to Dolly." He stooped and took up the dog with gentle touch. "He has probably been interviewing some p.r.i.c.kly-pears."

When Ruth had gone, Walter's interest in the jessamine vanished. He swung himself down to the ground. "Mrs. Chase has been telling me that you are thinking of going to California very soon?" he said, inquiringly.

"Yes; I guess we shall get off next week," Chase answered, examining Trone's little paws.

"I am going to be very bold," Walter went on. "I am going to ask you to take me with you."

Chase's features did not move, but his whole expression altered; the half-humorous look which his face always wore when, in the company of his young wife, he was "taking things easy," as he called it, gave place in a flash to the cool reticence of the man of business. "Take you?" he inquired, briefly. "Why?"

And then Willoughby, in the plainest and most direct words (a directness which was not, however, without the eloquence that comes from an intense desire), explained his wish to be admitted to a part, however small, in the California scheme. He allowed himself no reserves; he told the whole story of his father's spendthrift propensities, and his own small means in consequence. "I have a fixed determination to make money, Mr. Chase.

I dare say you have thought me idle; but I should not have idled if I had had at any time the right thing to go into. Work? There is literally no amount of work that I should shrink from, if it led towards the fortune upon which I am bent. I can, and I will, work as hard as ever you yourself have worked."

"I'm afraid you're looking for a soft snap," said Chase, shifting Mr.

Trone to his left arm, and putting his right hand into his trousers pocket, where he jingled a bunch of keys vaguely.

"If you will let me come in, even by a little edge only, I am sure you won't regret it," Walter went on. "Can't you recall, by looking back, your own determination to succeed, and how far it carried you, how strong it made you? Well, that is the way I feel to-day! You ought to be able to comprehend me. You've been over the same road."

"The same road!" repeated Chase, ironically. "Let's size it up a little.

I was taken out of school before I was fourteen--when my father died.

From that day I had not only to earn every crumb of bread I ate, but help to earn the bread of my sisters too. Before I was eighteen I had worked at half a dozen different things, and always at the rate of thirteen or fourteen hours a day. By the time I was twenty I was old; I had already lived a long and hard life. Now your side: A good home; every luxury; school; college; Europe!"

"You think that because I have been through Columbia, and because I once had a yacht (the yacht was in reality my uncle's), I shall never make a good business man," replied Walter. "Unfortunately, I have no means of proving to you the contrary, unless you will give me the chance I ask for. I don't pretend, of course, to have anything like your talents; they are your own, and unapproached. But I do say that I have ability; I _feel_ that I have."

"It's sizzling, is it?" commented Chase. "Why don't you put it into the business you're in already, then; the steamship firm of Willoughby, Chase, & Co.? Boom that; put on steam, and boom it for all you're worth; your uncles and I will see you through. You say you only want a chance; why on earth don't you take the one that lies before you? If you wish to convince me you know something, _that's_ the way."

"The steamship concern is too slow for me; I have looked into it, and I know. I might work at it for ten years, and with the small share I have in it I should not be very rich," Walter answered. "I'm in a hurry! I am willing to give everything on my side--all my time and my strength and my brains; but I want something good on the other."

"Now you're shouting!"

"The steamship firm is routine--regular; that isn't the way you made _your_ money," Walter went on.

"My way is open to everybody. It isn't covered by any patent that I know of," remarked Chase, in his dry tones.

"Yes, it is," answered Walter, immediately taking him up. "Or rather it was; the Bubble Baking-Powder was very tightly patented."

Chase grinned a little over this sally. But he was not moved towards the least concession, and Walter saw that he was not; he therefore played his last card. "I have a great deal of influence with my uncles, I think; especially with my uncle Nicholas."

"Put your money on Nicholas Willoughby, and you're safe, every time,"

remarked Chase, in a general way.

"I don't know whether you and Patterson care for more capital in developing your California scheme?" Walter went on. "But if you do, I could probably help you to some."

Chase looked at him. The younger man's eyes met his, bright as steel.

The millionaire walked over to a block of coquina, which had once formed part of a Spanish house; here he seated himself, established Petie Trone comfortably on his knee, and lifting his hand, tilted back still farther on his head his jessamine-decked hat. "You've been blowing about being able to work, Walter. But we can get plenty of hard workers without letting 'em into the ring. And you've been talking about being sharp.

Sharp you may be. But I rather guess that when it comes to _that_, Dave Patterson and I don't need any help. Capital, however, is another matter; it's always another matter. By enlarging our scheme at its present stage by a third (which we could do easily if your uncle Nicholas came in), we should make a much bigger pile."

There was no second block of coquina; Walter remained standing. But his compact figure looked st.u.r.dy and firm as he stood there beside the other man. "I could not go to my uncle without knowing what I am to tell him,"

he remarked, after a moment.

"Certainly not!" Chase answered. Then, after further reflection (this time Walter did not break the silence), he said: "Well, see here; I may as well state at the outset that unless your uncle will come in to a pretty big tune, we don't want him at all; 'twouldn't pay us; we'd prefer to play it alone. Now your uncles don't strike me as men who would be willing to take risks. You say you have influence with 'em, or rather with Nick. But I've got no proof of that. Of course it's possible; Nick has brought you up; he's got no son--only girls; perhaps he'd be willing to do for you what he'd do for a son of his own; perhaps he really would take a risk, to give you a first-cla.s.s start. But I repeat that I've no proof of your having the least influence with him.

What's more, I've a healthy amount of doubt about it! Oh, I dare say _you_ believe you've got a pull; you're straight as far as that goes. My notion is simply that you're mistaken, that you're barking up the wrong tree; Nicholas ain't that sort! However, as it happens to be the moment when we _could_ enlarge (and double the profits), I'll give you my terms. You have convinced me at least of one thing, and that is that you're very sharp set yourself as to money-making; you want tremendously to catch on. And it's _that_ I'm going to take as my security. In this way. In order to learn whether your uncle Nicholas, to oblige _you_, is willing to come in with Patterson and myself in this affair, you must first know what the affair is (as you very justly remarked); I must therefore tell you the whole scheme--show all my hand. Now, then, if I do this, and your uncle _doesn't_ take it up, then not only you don't get in yourself, but if I see the slightest indication that my confidence has been abused, I sell out of that steamship firm instanter, and, as I'm virtually the firm, you know what that will mean! And the one other property you have--that stock--you'll be surprised to see how it'll go down to next to nothing on the street. 'Twon't hurt _me_, you know. As for you, you'll deserve it all, and more, too, for having been a dunderhead!"

"I accept the terms," answered Willoughby. "Under the circ.u.mstances, they're not even hard. If I fail, I _am_ a dunderhead!--I shall be the first to say it. But I sha'n't fail." (Even at this moment, though he was intensely absorbed, his eye was struck by the contrast between the keen, hard expression of Horace Chase's face and his flower-decked hat; between the dry tones of his voice and the care with which he still held his wife's little dog, who at this instant, after a long yawn, affectionately licked the hand that held him, ringing by the motion the three small silver bells with which his young mistress had adorned his collar.) "If I am to go to California with you next week, I have no time to lose," he went on, promptly. "For I must first go to New York, of course, to see my uncle."

"Well, rather!" interpolated Chase.

"Couldn't you tell me now whatever I have to know?" Walter continued.

"This is as good a place as any. We might walk off towards that house on the right, near the sh.o.r.e; there is no danger of there being any jessamine _there_."

Here Ruth appeared. "Haven't you found any more?" she asked, surprised.

"Mr. Willoughby, you pretended to be so much interested! As for you, Horace, where is your spirit? I thought you liked to be first in everything?"

"First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen,"

quoted Chase. "Here--you'd better put your monkey in the phaeton," he went on, pa.s.sing over Mr. Trone. "He has a little rheumatism in his paw.

But you must try to bear it." His voice had again its humorous tones; the penetrating look in his eyes had vanished. His wife standing there, adorned with jessamine, her face looking child-like as she stroked her dog, seemed to change the man of a moment before into an entirely different being. In reality it did not do this; but it brought out another part of his nature, and a part equally strong. Ruth had taken off her gloves; the gems which her husband had given her flashed on her hands as she lifted Mr. Trone to her shoulder and laid her cheek against his little black head. "We are going for a short walk, Willoughby and I," Chase said--"over towards that house on the sh.o.r.e. We'll be back soon."

"That house is Dalton's," answered Ruth, looking in that direction.

"Mrs. Dalton makes the loveliest baskets, Horace; won't you get me one?

They are always a little one-sided, and that makes them much more original, you know, than those that are for sale in town."

"Oh, it makes them more original, does it?" repeated Chase.

When he returned, an hour later, he brought the basket.

Walter Willoughby started that night for New York.

CHAPTER XII

Seven weeks after she had searched for the first jessamine, Ruth Chase was again at St. Augustine. But in the meanwhile she had made a long journey, having accompanied her husband to California. Chase had unexpectedly come back to Florida, to see David Patterson. When he reached New York on his return from the West, and learned that Patterson had been stricken down by illness at Palatka, he decided that the best thing he could do would be to go to Palatka himself immediately.

Ruth was delighted. "That means St. Augustine for me, doesn't it? Mother and Dolly are still there. Oh, I _am_ so glad!"

"Why, Ruthie, do you care so much about it as all that? Why didn't you say so before?" said Chase, looking up from his letters. "Then I could have taken you down there in any case. Whereas now it's only this accident of Patterson's being laid up that has made me decide to go. You must _tell_ me what you want, always. It's the only way we can possibly get along," he concluded, with mock severity.

Ruth gazed at the fire; for in New York, at the end of March, it was still cold. "I love St. Augustine. I was _so_ happy there this winter,"

she said, musingly.

"Shall I build you a house near the sea-wall?" inquired her husband, gathering up his letters and telegrams. As he left the room, he paused beside her long enough to pa.s.s his hand fondly over her hair.