Making Money Part 38

"It's sort of like being in training again," said Bojo reminiscently.

"Jove, how they used to drive us in the fall--the old slave drivers!

It's great, though, to feel you've earned the right to rest. I say, Granning, it's a funny thing, but you know that first raise, ten dollars a week, thrilled me more than making thirty thousand in a clip. Come to think of it, I don't believe I ever really made that money."

"You didn't."

Bojo laughed. "Well, this is a man's life," he said evasively. Then suddenly: "What precious idiots we were that first night, prophesying our lives. Poor old Freddie, who was going to marry a million and all that--and weren't we indignant, though, at him! A fine grave he's dug for himself now. Queer."

"I like him better than if he'd married the other girl in cold blood."

"Yes, I suppose I do too. Still--" He broke off. "Do you believe he's had the sense to get out of the market?"

"No," said Granning shortly.

"Good Lord, if I thought that, I'd--"

"You'd do nothing. You can't help him--neither can I or any one. After all--don't think I'm hard, but what does it matter what happens to fellows like Fred DeLancy? What's important is what happens to men who've got power and energy and are trying to force their way up. Men you and I know--"

"That's rather cruel."

"Well, life is cruel. My sympathy is with the fellow that's knocking for opportunity, not the fellow who's throwing it away. Bojo, the salvation of this country isn't in making sinecures for good-natured, lovable chaps of the second generation, but in sorting 'em out and letting the weak ones fall behind. Keep open the doors to those who are coming up."

"I don't think you've ever forgiven Fred for taking that money," said Bojo reluctantly. "You don't like him."

"I did like him--but I've grown beyond him--and so have you," said Granning bluntly. In the last few months he had come to speak his mind directly to Bojo, with results that sometimes shocked the younger man.

At this moment the telephone rang.

"Shuffle over to it," said Granning, withdrawing his legs. "No one ever telephones for me."

"It may be from Fred--perhaps they're back," said Bojo, departing.

He came back in a few moments rather excited.

"That's queer--it's from Doris."

"Been rather neglectful, haven't you?"

"It wasn't long distance. She's here!"

"Here--in town?"

"Yes. Funny she didn't warn me," said Bojo, mystified. He dug out his hat from the crowded desk and halted before the reclining figure. "Well, I'm summoned. Sorry to leave you. Felt just like rambling along."

"Well, be firm."

"What?"

"Be firm."

"Now just what did he mean by that?" he said to himself as he tripped down the stairs and out. He puzzled more over this advice as he hastened uptown. Why had Doris come, abruptly and without notification? The more he thought of it, the more he believed he understood the reason of Granning's warning. Doris had come to him with some new proposition, an investment for quick returns or an opening along lines of increasing salaries. The open surface-car with its cargo of coatless men and shirt-waisted women went pounding up the Avenue, hurrying him toward Doris.

He would have been at loss to define to himself his real feelings.

Despite the sudden awakening in her, the delirious quality of romance had not returned to him. Memories of another face and other hours had ended that. Yet there was a solid feeling of doing the right thing, of playing square by Doris, and of a responsibility well performed. In the long, crowded, heated weeks there were long intervals when he forgot her entirely. Yet when he saw her or opened her letters, poignant with solicitude and faith, he felt his imagination kindle, if but for the moment.

He had reached the self-conscious stage in youth when he looked upon himself as supernaturally old and tried in the furnace of experience. He quieted the dormant longings in his heart by a.s.suring himself that he now took a different view of marriage, a more significant one as a grave social step. The less he felt the romance of their relations, the more he acknowledged the solid supplementary qualities which Doris would bring him as his companion, as a.s.sociate and organizer of the home.

That he could not give her all that she now poured out unreservedly to him, gave him at times a twinge of pity and compa.s.sion. She was so keen to progress, to broaden the outlook of her views, to be of real service to him. There were moments in her letters of inner revelations that stirred him almost with the guilty feeling of surprising what was not his to see. The idea of an early marriage would have been unbearable, yet as a possibility of the future it seemed to him an eminently wise and just procedure.

At the Drake mansion his ring was answered by a caretaker, who came doubtfully to let him in, pausing to search for the electric b.u.t.tons. In the anteroom and down the vistas of the salons, everything was bare and draped in dust-clothes; there was a feeling of abandonment and loneliness in the bared arches, as on his first visit a year before.

"Bojo--is it you?"

He heard her voice descending somewhere from the upper flights of the great stone stairway, and answered cheerily. The caretaker disappeared, satisfied, and he waited at the foot while she came rushing down and hung herself in his arms.

"Why, Doris!" he exclaimed, surprised at her emotion and the tenseness of the figure that clung to him. "Doris, why, what's wrong?"

"Wait, wait," she said breathlessly, burying her head on his shoulder and tightening the grip of her arms.

She led him, still clinging to his side, through the ballroom and the little salon into the great library, where he had gone for his decisive interview with Drake. They stood a moment in filtered obscurity, groping for the b.u.t.tons, until suddenly the room sprang out of the night. Then he saw that she had been weeping. Before he could exclaim, the tears sprang to her eyes and she flung herself in his arms again, sheltering her head against his shoulder, clinging to his protection as though reeling before the sudden down swoop of a storm. His first thought was of death, a catastrophe in the family--father, mother--Patsie! At this thought his heart seemed to stop and he said brokenly:

"Doris, what is it--nothing has happened--no one is--is in danger?"

"No, no," she said in a whisper. "Oh, don't make me speak--not just yet.

Keep your arms about me. Tighter so that I can never, never get away."

He obeyed, wondering, his mind alert, seeking a reason for this strange emotion. Suddenly she raised her head and, seizing his in her hands with such tenacity that he felt the cut of her sharp little fingers, kissed him with the poignant agony of a great separation.

"Bojo, remember this," she cried through her tears, "whatever happens--whatever comes--it is you--you! I shall love only you all my life--no one else!"

"Whatever happens?" he said, frowning, but beginning to have a glimmer of the truth. "What do you mean?"

She moved from him, standing, with head slightly down, staring at him silently for a long moment. Then she said, shaking her head slowly:

"Oh, how you will hate me!"

He went to her quickly and, taking her by the wrist, led her to the big sofa.

"Now sit down. Tell me just what this all means!"

His tone was harsh, and she glanced at him, frightened.

"It means," she said at last, "that I am not what you thought--what I thought I could be. I am not strong. I've tried and I've failed! I am very, very weak, very selfish. I can't give up what I'm used to--luxury!

I can't, Bojo, I can't--it's beyond me!" She turned away, her handkerchief to her eyes, while he sat without a word, compelling her to go on. At last she turned, stealing a look at his set face. "Of course you'll say you told me--but I tried-- I did try!"

"I am saying nothing at all," he said quietly. "So you wish to end the engagement, that is all, isn't it?"

"All!" she said indignantly with a flood of tears. "Oh, how can you look at me so brutally? I am miserable, absolutely miserable. I am throwing away my life, my whole chance of loving, of being happy, and you look at me as though you were sending me to the gallows!"

If her distress was intended to weaken him in his att.i.tude of quiet, critical contemplation, it failed. Nevertheless he modified his tone somewhat.