The Empty Sack Part 10

With ears c.o.c.ked like a donkey's, how could he help it? There was nothing in the world that Dauphin despised as he despised the police dog's ears. They were forever pointed, alert, inquisitive, ign.o.ble. But there it was! Max was bounding down the driveway, covering yards at a spring, before the setter could drag himself from his haunches. It was Max, too, who, when the motor pa.s.sed the oak, gave the first yelp of delight.

But it was Dauphin who, as his master descended from the car, entered into his depression. It was he, too, who perceived the conflict of auras when wife and husband met. Waves of unreasoned dread on the one side encountered a force of clear-eyed determination on the other as the weltering sea comes up against the steadfast rocks.

They began talking as they turned to enter the house, continuing the conversation within the great hall, where only the strip of red carpet running its length and up the fine stairway, two or three bits of old carved English oak, and the bra.s.s touches on the wrought-iron bal.u.s.ter, relieved the admirable nudity.

"Now come in here," she said, briskly, having heard all that had pa.s.sed between him and Bob.

He followed her into the library, where she led the way to the desk.

"Read that."

He ran his eye over the lines written in her legible, decorative hand.

_Collingham Lodge,_ _Marillo Park._

_Dear Miss Follett_:

My husband and I would be greatly obliged if you could give us a half hour of your time to talk over matters which may prove as important to you as to us. If you could make it convenient to come here to-morrow, Thursday, afternoon, you would find a very good train at three-twenty-five, and one by which to return at five-forty-seven. I inclose a time-table, and you would be met at Marillo Station.

Yours sincerely, _Junia Collingham_.

He looked at her wonderingly.

"What's the big idea?"

"A very big idea. Don't you see? We can cut the ground right from under his feet without his ever thinking we had anything to do with it. You personally needn't be supposed to know that this nonsense has ever been in the air. It's too late for me, of course, because he and I have already talked of it. But for you-"

He tapped the paper in his hand.

"But this move I don't understand."

"Well, sit down and I'll tell you."

CHAPTER VI

At the minute when Junia Collingham was laying before her husband a plan which would bring comparative wealth to the Follett family, a number of things were happening in and about New York.

First, Lizzie Follett had dropped into a chair to think, an action rare with her. She generally thought as she whisked about her work, but this problem called for concentration. Briefly, it was as to how to cook the supper without heat. The gas-man had just gone away, and the gas for the range had been cut off because she couldn't pay a bill of twenty-nine dollars and sixty-seven cents, or anything on account. This was Wednesday, and she would have no more money till the children got their various pay-envelopes on Sat.u.r.day.

Though in the back of her mind she blamed herself for an unwise distribution of the week's funds, it was one of those situations in which you blame yourself without seeing how you could have done otherwise. With six to feed, and all the subsidiary expenses of a family to meet, she had twenty-two dollars a week. Of his eighteen, Teddy gave her fifteen, three being needed for car fares and other small necessities. From the six she earned at the studio, Jennie contributed three. Gladys, who was now a cash girl on seven a week, was able to turn in four. Gussie brought nothing to the common fund as yet, for the reason that the three-fifty which Madame Corinne conceded for the privilege of "teaching her the millinery" allowed no margin over what she had to spend.

To Lizzie, during the past six months, life had become an exciting game.

How to pay the minimum on every account and yet keep alive her credit had been the calculation with which she rose in the morning and lay down at night. It was a game that could be played successfully for two months, or three months, or four. When it came to six, the heaping-up of unpaid balances made it harder to go on.

It was making it impossible to go on. During the past fortnight she had found her credit stopped at three places in The Square where Pemberton Heights did its shopping. In vain she had tried to transfer her account elsewhere, but Pemberton Heights is no more than a huge village where the status of most families is known. More and more her small amount of cash was needed for cash purposes in order that the family might live.

Lizzie sat down to cast up her a.s.sets. She had the small remnants of a ham which could be eaten cold. She had bread and b.u.t.ter. If she could only make tea.... She might have done that in a neighbor's house, but she shrank from exposing a situation which a lucky stroke might change.

At the same moment Josiah was turning away from a wooden bar which shut off an office from the public. He had entered and stood there, meek, un.o.btrusive, trembling, while none of the young men or young women busy at desks or with one another paid him any attention. When a girl with hair combed over her ears, very bright eyes, and very short skirts, tripped by him accidentally, he managed to stammer out something in which she caught the word "job." The word being significant, and Josiah's appearance more so, she whispered to a gentleman, who left his desk and came forward.

"No; I'm very sorry. We can't do anything for you."

He hadn't waited for the word "job"; he hadn't waited for Josiah to speak at all. He knew the situation so well that his method was to end it there and then. Josiah turned away meekly as he had entered, and with no sinking of the heart. His heart used to sink; but that was four and five months previously, before he had exhausted his emotions. Now the bitterness of death was past. It had pa.s.sed day by day and inch by inch, by stages of slow agony, leaving him with a dried soul that couldn't suffer any more.

And also at this minute Teddy was standing in his cage at the bank in a very peculiar situation. At least it struck him as peculiar, because for the first time he perceived its opportunities.

For Teddy, too, six months had been a period of development, just as it is for a green fruit when you pick it and lay it in the sun. It ripens, but it ripens green. When you eat it, it has a green flavor, or a flat flavor, or none at all. Teddy was a fruit to be left on the tree to take its time. He was now twenty-one, with the promptings of sixteen. At his own rate of progress, he would probably have reached twenty by the time he was twenty-two, but thirty at twenty-five.

As it was, he had been called on to be thirty when his growth was just beginning. Not merely the circ.u.mstances had made this demand on him, but the dependence, more or less unconscious, of the members of the family.

They looked to him to do something big because he was a young man.

Having heard of other young men who had been financially heroic, they expected him to be the same. The possibilities, open to a bank clerk of twenty-one had no relation to their hopes. Even his mother, chiefly because of her adoration, seemed to feel that he should spring from eighteen to a hundred dollars a week by the force of inner flame.

She didn't say so, of course. She only revealed her sentiments as Pansy revealed hers, by an inextinguishable look. The father did no more than throw emphasis on the boy's responsibility. Jennie and Gladys never said anything at all, but Gussie was quite frank.

"A great big fellow like you and only making eighteen per! Look at poor momma, working her fingers to the bone. I'd be ashamed if I were you.

Why, Fred Inglis orders his clothes at Love's and keeps his own Ford."

It was all there in a nut sh.e.l.l-his inability to rise to the occasion in a land where everyone else who was worth his salt had only to shake the money tree and pick up coin. How Fred Inglis did it Teddy couldn't think, when your value by the week was so definitely fixed and a raise lay so far ahead. If he had developed during the past six months, it was mainly through a carking sense of inefficiency.

Meanwhile, he had to do what Gussie told him-watch his mother work her fingers to the bone. In spite of a tendency to squabble, the Folletts were an affectionate family, and the mother was the center of their love. Teddy didn't stop to a.n.a.lyze what she was to them; he only knew that there was nothing he wouldn't be to her. If he could only have compa.s.sed it, she would have had a bar-pin like their neighbor, Mrs.

Weatherby; she would have worn the skunk neckpiece for which he had once heard her utter a desire; she would have gone out in his Ford oftener than Fred Inglis's mother in his. These things he would have done for her and more, had he but been the financial t.i.tan all American example called on him to become. Between Gussie's taunts and his own What lack I yet? he was reaching a condition of despair.

And now, on this particular afternoon, when nearly everyone had left the bank and Mr. Brunt, to whom he was specially attached, was working later than usual, there was the fruit of the money tree piled up on the ground. Mr. Brunt had gone to the other end of the main office, and would return presently to stow these piles of bills in the safe. These bills were money. Teddy had never consciously dwelt on that fact before.

He had been in this same situation a thousand times, when he had nothing to do but put out his hands and stuff his pockets with food and fuel and gas and the interest on the mortgage, and all the other things of which there was such a lack at home, and had never considered that the needed things were here.

He remembered that as a child in Nova Scotia he would occasionally swipe an apple from a cart-load, knowing that the owner couldn't miss it, and had the same sensation now. Here were the piles of bills, all arranged in rows according to their values-a pile of hundreds, a pile of fifties, a pile of twenties, and so on down. Mr. Brunt would come back, as he had done at other times, and put them away without counting them. Having counted them already, he would accept this reckoning for the day. He, Teddy, was left there to see that nothing happened to this treasure.

He was never able to tell how it came about, but without seemingly being able to control the action of his hand he had slipped a twenty-dollar bill from the top of the pile into his own pocket. It was an instant's weakness, followed the next instant by repentance. Teddy knew what theft was. He had not, through his father, had so much to do with banks without being fully aware of the sure and pitiless punishment meted out to it. He didn't mean to steal. He was horror-stricken at the act. Quick as a flash his hand went into his pocket again-but Mr. Brunt was back.

The thing that could have been done at once had to be deferred.

Looking for a chance to drop the bill to the floor and make rest.i.tution by picking it up, it was annoying that Mr. Brunt should give him none.

Mr. Brunt seemed possessed by a demon of speed, so quickly had he locked all the piles in the safe, and then locked the cage behind him. Teddy found himself outside with the bill still burning in his pocket.

Even so there were other possibilities. Going to the washroom, he hung on there till Mr. Brunt had gone home. The cage was made of open wire-work. It was a simple thing to slip a bill through one of the interstices. It would be found next morning on the floor and a fresh running-over of accounts would show where it belonged. Mr. Brunt would wonder how he came to be so careless, but with his balance straight he would be satisfied.

But as Teddy reached the cage, there was Doolan, the night watchman.

Doolan was an ex-policeman, too old for public office, but equal to sounding an alarm in case the bank was being robbed. He was a friendly soul, and in strolling up to Teddy had no motive beyond asking after the "ould man" and whether or not he had yet found a job. But Teddy suspected that he was being watched. He didn't know but that Doolan might have seen the movement of the hand which s.n.a.t.c.hed the bill from the pile. When he stirred to go homeward, Doolan might clutch him by the neck. It was a strange, new sensation to feel that within a minute, within a few seconds, the law might have its grip on him. Having said good-by to Doolan and turned away, he took the first steps in expectation of a stern command to come back.

It was another strange new sensation to be walking the familiar ways of Broad Street and Wall Street with this strange new consciousness. There were thousands of bright young men and women streaming to electrics, subways, and ferries in the first stages of commuting, and among them he bore a secret mark. Tramping along in the crowd, he felt like a soldier marching with his comrades to the trenches, but knowing himself picked for death. Luckily, his folly was not even now beyond reparation. He would get to the bank early in the morning, discover the cursed bill lying in some artfully chosen corner of the floor, and restore it to Mr.

Brunt. All the same, it was a relief to get away from the fear of detection which he felt to be haunting the streets by plunging into the maw of the subway, where his ident.i.ty was swallowed up.