Making Money Part 19

That night Bojo sent a long letter off to Doris, who was staying in the Berkshires with Gladys Stone as a guest. As a result the two young men departed for a week-end of winter sports. On the Pullman they stowed their valises and wandered back into the smoker where the first person Bojo saw, bound for the same destination, was young Boskirk.

CHAPTER XII

SNOW MAGIC

Boskirk and Bojo greeted each other with that excessive cordiality which the conventions of society impose upon two men who hate each other cordially but are debarred from the primeval instincts to slay.

"He wouldn't gamble, he wouldn't take a risk! Oh no, nothing human about him," said Bojo to Fred, sending a look of antagonism at Boskirk, who was adjusting his gla.s.ses and spreading the contents of a satchel on the table before him.

"The human cash-register!" said DeLancy. "Born at the age of forty-two, middle names Caution, Conservatism, and the Const.i.tution. Favorite romance--Statistics."

"Thank you!" said Bojo, somewhat mollified.

"There was a young man named Boskirk Who never his duty would shirk,--"

began DeLancy--and forthwith retired into intellectual seclusion to complete the limerick.

The spectacle of Boskirk immersed in business detail irritated Bojo immeasurably. The feeling it aroused in him was not jealousy but rather a sense that some one was threatening his right and his property.

A complete and insidious change had been worked in his moral fiber. The hazardous speculation to which he was now committed, which was nothing but the sheerest and most vicious form of gambling, the wrecking of property, would have been impossible to him six months before. But he had lived too long in the atmosphere of luxury, and too close to the master adventurers of that speculative day. Luxury had become a second nature to him; contact with men who could sell him out twenty times over had brought him the parching hunger for money. All other ideals had yielded before a new ideal--force. To impose one's self, making one's own laws, brushing aside weak scruples, planning above ridiculously simple and obvious schemes of legal conduct for the ordering of the mult.i.tude, silencing criticism by the magnitude of the operation--a master where a weak man ended a criminal:--this was the new scheme of life which he was gradually absorbing.

He had become worldly with the confidence of succeeding. Whatever compunctions he had formerly felt about a marriage with Doris he had dismissed as pure sentimentality. There remained only a certain pride, a desire to know his worth by some master stroke. In this fierce need, he had lost moderation and caution. With the steady decline of Pittsburgh & New Orleans, his appet.i.te had increased. It was no longer a fair profit he wanted, but something miraculous. He had sold hundreds of shares, placing always a limit, vowing to be satisfied, and always going beyond it. He had plunged first to the amount of thirty odd thousand, reserving the fifty thousand which was pledged to the pool, but which he had not been called on to deliver. But this fifty thousand remained a horrible ever-present temptation. He resisted at first, borrowing five thousand from Marsh when the rage of selling drove him deeper in; then finally, absolutely confident, he had yielded, without much shock to his conscience, and drawn each day until on this morning he had drawn on the last ten thousand as collateral.

And still Pittsburgh & New Orleans receded, heaping up before his mind fantastic profits.

"When asked, 'Don't you tire,'

He said, 'Di diddledee dire-- I never can get enough work.'"

finished Fred with a grimace. "That's pretty bad--but so's the subject."

"Look here, Fred," said Bojo, thus recalled from the tyranny of figures which kept swirling before his eyes. "I want to talk to you. I'm worried about your letting Louise Varney in on Pittsburgh & New Orleans; besides I suspect you've plunged a darned sight deeper than you ought."

And from the moral superiority of a man of force, he read him a lecture on the danger to the mere outsider of risking all on one hazard--a sensible pointed warning which DeLancy accepted contritely, in utter ignorance of the preacher's own perilous position.

It was well after seven when they stepped out on the icy station amid the gay crowd of week-enders. Patsie, at the reins, halloed to them from a rakish cutter, and the next moment they were off over the crackling snow with long, luminous, purple shadows at their sides, racing past other sleighs with jingling bells and shrieks of recognition.

"Heavens, Patsie, you're worse than Fred with his car! I say, look out--you missed that cutter by a foot," said Bojo, who had taken the seat beside the young Eskimo at an imperious command.

"Pooh, that's nothing!" said that reckless person. "Watch this." With a sudden swerve she drew past a contending sleigh and gained the head of the road by a margin so narrow that the occupants of the back seat broke into many cries.

"Here, let me out-- Murder!-- Police!"

"Don't worry, the snow's lovely and soft!" Patsie shouted back, delighted. "Turned over myself yesterday--doesn't hurt a bit."

This encouraging information was received with frantic cries and demands on Bojo to take the reins.

"Don't you dare," said the gay lady indignantly, setting her feet firmly and flinging all the weight of her shoulders against a sudden break of the spirited team.

"Pulling pretty hard," said Bojo, watching askance the riotous struggle that whirled past cottage and evergreen and filled the air with a snowy bombardment from the scurrying hoofs. "Say when, if you need me."

"I _won't_! Tell the back seat to jump if I shout!"

"Holy murder!" exclaimed Fred DeLancy, who so far forgot his animosities as to cling to Boskirk, possibly with the idea of providing himself a cushion in case of need.

"Are they awfully scared?" said Patsie in a delighted whisper. "Yes?

Just you wait till we get to the gate. That will make them howl! How's your nose--frozen?

"Glorious!"

"Too cold for Doris and the rest. Catch them getting chapped up. Their idea of winter sports is popping popcorn by the fire. Thank heaven you've arrived, Bojo! I'm suffocating. Hold tight!"

"Hold tight!" sang out Bojo, not without some apprehension as the sleigh, without slackening speed, approached the sudden swerve which led through ma.s.sive stone columns into the Drake estate. The quick turn raised them on edge, skidding over the beaten snow so that the sleigh came up with a b.u.mp against the farther pillar and then shot forward up the long hill crowned with blazing porches and to a stop at last, saluted by the riotous acclaim of a dozen dogs of all sizes and breeds.

"Scared--honor-bright?" said Patsie, leaping out as a groom came up to take the horses.

"Never again!" said DeLancy, springing to terra firma with a groan of relief, while Boskirk looked at the reckless girl with a disapproving shake of his head.

They went stamping into the great hall to the warmth of a great log blaze, Patsie dancing ahead, shedding toboggan cap and m.u.f.fler riotously on the way, for a dignified footman to gather in.

"Don't look so disappointed!" she cried, laughing, as the three young men looked about expectantly. "The parlor beauties are upstairs splashing in paint and powder, getting ready for the grand entrance!"

Boskirk and DeLancy went off to their rooms while Bojo, at a sign from Patsie, remained behind.

"Well?" he said.

"Bojo, do me a favor--a great favor," she said instantly, seizing the lapels of his coat. "It's moonlight to-night and we've got the most glorious coast for a toboggan and, Bojo, I'm just crazy to go. After dinner, won't you? Please say yes."

"Why, we'll get up a party," said Bojo, hesitating and tempted.

"Party? Catch those mollycoddles getting away from the steam-heaters!

Now, Bojo, be a dear. You're the only real being I've had here in weeks.

Besides, if you have any s.p.u.n.k you'll do it," she added artfully.

"What do you mean?"

"Just let Doris get her fill of that old fossil of a Boskirk. Show your independence. Bojo, please do it for me!"

She clung to him, coquetting with her eyes and smile with the dangerous inconscient coquetry of a child, and this radiance and rosy youth, so close to him, so intimately offered, brought him a disturbing emotion.

He turned away so as not to meet the sparkling, pleading glance.

"Young lady," he said with a.s.sumed gruffness, "I see you are learning entirely too fast. I believe you are actually flirting with me."

"Then you will!" she cried gleefully. "Hooray!" She flung her arms about him in a rapturous squeeze and fled like a wild animal in light, graceful bounds up the stairs, before he could qualify his acquiescence.