The Empty Sack Part 18

Well, he's a good man-kind and just in his way-but oh, so stern and relentless! If he knew what Bob had done in going through that mad thing with you, he'd turn the boy adrift."

Having reseated herself already, Jennie now closed her lips. She had forgotten Mr. Collingham. Coming to stay was meeting a new obstacle.

"It's only fair to you to make you understand what kind of man my husband is. Of course, he's a strong man, otherwise he wouldn't have accomplished all he has. My son, my daughter, I myself-we're but puppets on his string. His word has to be law to us. And with Bob the way he is-wanting to marry every girl he meets-and forgetting her next day-his father has no patience. You don't know how hard it is for me, my dear, always to have to stand between them."

As she paused to dab her eyes, Jennie saw the limousine, the villa, with Teddy's chance of pickling down ten a week, fading out like a picture in the movies.

"I wouldn't dare to tell him of the great wrong Bob has done to you.

He'd disinherit him on the spot. If Bob were to insist on having this escapade-you wouldn't really call it a marriage, would you?-but if he were to insist on its being made public, why, there'd be an end of his relations with his father. My husband would neither give him a cent nor leave him a cent. I must say that Bob would deserve it; but, Jennie, I'm thinking of you. You'd have forsaken the man you loved, married a man you didn't care for, and got nothing in the world to show for it. That's where you'd have to suffer, and I can see well enough that you're suffering already."

There was every reason now that Jennie's tears should begin to flow.

Flow they did while her companion watched.

"And yet, as you'll see, Mr. Collingham is not an unkind man. When I explained to him that we might be more indebted to you than I had thought at first, he said-"

With a look of antic.i.p.ation, Jennie stopped crying suddenly, though the tears already shed were glistening on her cheek.

The point was now to find phraseology at once clear enough and delicate enough to suggest a course and yet not shock the sensibilities.

"You see, my dear, it's this way. One has to keep one's ideals, hasn't one? That goes without saying. Once we let our ideals go"-she flung her hands outward-"well, what's the use of living? My own life hasn't been as happy as you might think; and if it hadn't been for my ideals-"

Jennie broke in because she couldn't help it.

"Mr. Wray is ideal for a man, don't you think, Mrs. Collingham?"

It was the lead Junia needed.

"He's perfect, Jennie, in his way; and, oh, how I wish you were as free as forty-eight hours ago! You could be, of course, if-But I mustn't advise you, must I? I don't know how to. I'm just as lost as you are.

Only, if you could find a way to cast the burden of the whole thing on Bob-"

"Do you mean to make him get the divorce?"

"In that case, we should want to feel that you had something to fall back upon. And so my husband thought that perhaps twenty-five thousand dollars-"

Jennie gave a great gasp. Her head began to swim. Not villas and limousines rose before her, but cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces.

"Poor daddy," she thought, "wouldn't have to hunt for a job any more, and momma'd have nothing to do for the rest of her life but sit in a chair and rock."

Yet that was only part of the vision. The rest did not go so easily into words. She had only to hurry to the studio, fling herself into the arms she was longing to feel clasped round her-and become fabulously rich.

That would be if Bob took the opening she offered him. If he didn't-

"But suppose Bob won't?" she asked, in terror lest he should not.

"I've thought of that, too," came the prompt answer. "He will, of course. But suppose he didn't. Well, we're not hagglers, my dear. We're only simple people trying to do right, just as you're trying to do right yourself. If Bob is only in a position in which he _can_ undo his wrong, whether he undoes it or not, you shall have your twenty-five thousand just the same."

"Could I have it as early as-as next week?"

"If the conditions are fulfilled, certainly."

Jennie was anxious to free herself from the charge of cupidity.

"The reason I say next week is that my father is worried about the interest on the mortgage and the taxes. He didn't pay the interest last time, and the taxes are two months overdue. If he can't find the money by next week-"

"You yourself can be in a position to take all the worry off his hands-once the conditions are fulfilled."

Little more was said after this. There was little more to say. The necessities of the case being once understood, Junia steered her guest back to the car which waited at the door.

But into the leave-taking Max threw an odd note of hostility. As if he resented some baseness toward his master, he pressed his flank against Jennie with such force as almost to knock her down, and when she sprang away from him into the car he growled after her.

CHAPTER X

"So you can do it and get away with it." This was Teddy's reflection as he left the bank on that Thursday afternoon. He had spent an infernal day, but it was over, and over safely. Of the missing twenty dollars he had neither heard a word nor caught a sign of anxiety. Mr. Brunt had been methodical and taciturn as usual. Always keeping a gulf between Teddy and himself, it was neither more nor less a gulf to-day than it was on other days. As to whether he missed twenty dollars or whether he did not, Teddy could form no idea.

In the middle of the morning there had been a terrifying incident.

"See that guy over there?" Lobley, one of his colleagues, had asked him.

He saw the guy over there-a crafty, clean-shaven Celt-and said so.

"That's Flynn, the detective who copped Nicholson, the teller at the Wyndham National."

"O my G.o.d! I'm pinched!" Teddy exclaimed to himself. "If I had a gun or a dose of poison, he'd never get me alive."

But Flynn only chatted with Jackman, one of the house detectives, laughed, cashed a check at a wicket, and left the bank.

Teddy breathed again, wondering if he had given anything away to Lobley.

Was it possible that Lobley could have heard of the twenty dollars and been set to try him out? No; he didn't believe so. Lobley had merely pointed out Flynn as a notable character, and gone about his business.

"I shall never forget that mug," Teddy thought, as he summoned his _sang-froid_ to go on with his work. "The mug of a guy without guts," he added, further to define the pitiless set of Flynn's features. "I sure would kill myself before I let him touch me."

There was no other alarm that day; there was only the incessant fear, the incessant watchfulness that made him shrink from every eye that glanced his way, and which, when office hours were over, sent him scuttling to the subway like a rabbit to its hole.

At supper, his father brought up again the subject of the taxes and the interest on the mortgage. The latter would be due at the end of the following week, and the former was long overdue. With the added interest on both, he owed two hundred and sixty-odd dollars, of which he had borrowed from old friends a hundred and fifteen. Between the sum due and that in hand, there was a gap which he didn't see how to fill.

"We'll get it somehow, daddy," Jennie said, encouragingly. "Don't begin worrying."

"No; Ted'll rob the bank," Gussie laughed, flippantly.

Teddy was on his feet, shaking his fist across the table.

"See here, Miss Gus; that's just about-"

Gussie laughed up at him, still more flippantly.