The Main Chance Part 8

He saw here, in the intimacies of their common table, men of a higher social standing than he had known before. Their way of chaffing one another seemed to him very bright; they mocked at the G.o.ds and were not destroyed. Raridan was a new species and spoke a strange tongue. Raridan and Wheelock appeared at the table in dinner-coats, and after a few weeks Wheaton followed their example. Raridan, he knew, dressed whether he went out or not, and he established his own habit in this particular with as little delay as possible. The table then balanced, the smelter manager, the secretary of the terra cotta manufacturing company, and the traveling pa.s.senger agent of the Transcontinental Railroad appearing in the habiliments which they wore at their respective places of business, and Raridan, Wheaton and Wheelock in black and white.

The humor of this division was not lost on the traveling pa.s.senger agent, who chaffed the "glad rag" faction, as he called it, until Raridan took up arms for his own side of the table.

"It may be true, sir, what you say about a division here between the working and non-working cla.s.ses; but wit and beauty have from most ancient times bedecked themselves in robes of purity. A man like yourself, whose business is to persuade people to ride on the worst railroad on earth, should properly array himself in sackcloth and ashes, and not in purple and fine linen, which belong to those who severally give their thoughts to the,--er--promotion of peace"--indicating Wheelock--"sound finances," indicating Wheaton, "and--er--in my own case--"

"Yes, do tell us," said the railroad man, ironically.

"To faith and good works," said Warrick imperturbably.

"And mostly works,--I don't think!" declared Wheelock.

The relations between Porter and Wheaton were strictly of a business character. This was not by intention on Porter's part. He a.s.sumed that at some time he or Thompson had known all about Wheaton's antecedents; and after so many years of satisfactory service, during the greater part of which the bank had been protected against Wheaton, as against all the rest of the employees, by a bonding company, he accepted the cashier without any question. Before Evelyn's return he had one day expressed to Wheaton his satisfaction that he would soon have a home again, and Wheaton remarked with civil sympathy that Miss Porter must now be "quite a young lady."

"Oh, yes; you must come up to the house when we get going again," Porter answered.

Wheaton had seen the inside of few houses in Clarkson. He had a recollection of having been sent to Porter's several times, while he was still an errand boy in the bank, to fetch Porter's bag on occasions when the president had been called away unexpectedly. He remembered Evelyn Porter as she used to come as a child and sit in the carriage outside the bank to wait for her father; the Porters stood to him then, and now, for wealth and power.

Raridan had a contempt for Wheaton's intellectual deficiencies; and praise of Wheaton's steadiness and success vexed him as having some sting for himself; but his own amiable impulses got the better of his prejudices, and he showed Wheaton many kindnesses. When the others at The Bachelors' nagged Wheaton, it was Raridan who threw himself into the controversy to take Wheaton's part. He took him to call at some of the houses he knew best, and though this was a matter of propinquity he knew nevertheless that he preferred Wheaton to the others in the house.

Wheaton was not noisy nor pretentious and the others were sometimes both.

Wheaton soon found it easy to do things that he had never thought of doing before. He became known to the florist and the haberdasher; there was a little Hambletonian at a certain liveryman's which Warry Raridan drove a good deal, and he had learned from Warry how pleasant it was to drive out to the new country club in a runabout instead of using the street car, which left a margin of plebeian walking at the end of the line. He had never smoked, but he now made it a point to carry cigarettes with him. Raridan and many other young men of his acquaintance always had them; he fancied that the smoking of a cigarette gave a touch of elegance to a gentleman. Captain Wheelock smoked cigarettes which bore his own monogram, and as he said that these did not cost any more than others of the same brand, Wheaton allowed the captain to order some for him. But while he acquired the superficial graces, he did not lose his instinctive thrift; he had never attempted to plunge, even on what his a.s.sociates at The Bachelors' called "sure things"; and he was equally incapable of personal extravagances. If he bought flowers he sent them where they would tell in his favor. If he had five dollars to give to the _Gazette's_ Ice Fund for the poor, he considered that when the newspaper printed his name in its list of acknowledgments, between Timothy Margrave, who gave fifty dollars, and William Porter, who gave twenty-five, he had received an adequate return on his investment.

A few days after Evelyn Porter came home, Wheaton followed Raridan to his room one evening after dinner. Raridan had set The Bachelors' an example of white flannels for the warm weather, and Wheaton also had abolished his evening clothes. Raridan's rooms had not yet lost their novelty for him. The pictures, the statuettes, the books, the broad couch with its heap of varicolored pillows, the table with its candelabra, by which Raridan always read certain of the poets,--these still had their mystery for Wheaton.

"Going out to-night?" he asked with a show of indifference.

"Hadn't thought of it," answered Raridan, who was cutting the pages of a magazine. "Kick the cat off the couch there, won't you?--it's that blessed Chinaman's beast. Don't know what a Mongolian is doing with a cat,--Egyptian bird, isn't it?"

"Don't let me interrupt if you're reading," said Wheaton. "But I thought some of dropping in at Mr. Porter's. Miss Porter's home now, I believe."

"That's a good idea," said Raridan, who saw what was wanted. He threw his magazine at the cat and got up and yawned. "Suppose we do go?"

The call had been successfully managed. Miss Porter was very pretty, and not so young as Wheaton expected to find her. Raridan left him talking to her and went across to the library, where Mr. Porter was reading his evening paper. Raridan had a way of wandering about in other people's houses, which Wheaton envied him. Miss Porter seemed to take his call as a matter of course, and when her father came out presently and greeted him casually as if he were a familiar of the house he felt relieved and gratified.

CHAPTER VII

WARRY RARIDAN'S INDIGNATION

Raridan stayed in town all summer, and he and Saxton saw a good deal of each other. They drove often to the country club together, and Saxton became, as people said, another of Warry's enthusiasms. Saxton was no idler, and he was conscientiously striving to bring order out of chaos in the interests which had been confided to him. He was annoyed, at first, when Raridan in his unlimited leisure, began to invade his office; but as the confidence and ease of real friendship grew between them he did not scruple to send him away, or to throw him a newspaper and bid him read and keep still. Raridan was the plaything of many moods; Saxton was equable and steady. They sought each other with the old perversity of antipodal natures.

Saxton came in unexpectedly on Raridan at The Bachelors' one evening in September. The day had been hot with the final fling of summer, but a thunder shower had cooled the atmosphere, and there stole in pleasantly the drip, drip, of the rain which was now abating. Heat lightning glowed in the west with the luminousness so marked in that region.

"It's an infernal, hideous shame," called Raridan fiercely through the dark, recognizing Saxton's step.

"Thanks! I'm glad I came," said Saxton, cheerfully.

"I'd like to be a cannibal for a few hours," growled Raridan, kicking a chair toward Saxton without rising from the couch where he lay sprawled.

Saxton went about quietly, lighting the gas, picking up the books and newspapers which Raridan had evidently cast from him in his rage, and making a seat for himself by the window.

"I'm not an expert in lunacy, but I'll hear your trouble. Go ahead."

Raridan got up suddenly, his gla.s.ses swinging wildly from their cord.

"Put out that light," he commanded savagely; and Saxton did as he was bidden.

"Do you know what Evelyn Porter's going to do?" demanded Raridan.

"I certainly do not. You seem to want to leave me in the dark; and that's no joke."

"She's going to be queen of their infernal Knights of Midas ball, that's what."

"Your language is spirited, I must say. I think we may cla.s.sify that as important if true."

"It's an outrage; an infernal d.a.m.ned shame!" Raridan went on.

"Language unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--"

"There's a fine girl, as charming as any girl dare be. She has a father who doesn't appreciate her;--a good fellow and all that and he wouldn't hurt her for anything on earth; but he hasn't got any sensibility; that's the trouble with scores of American fathers. These Western ones are worse than any others. They break their sons in, whenever they can, to the same collars they've worn themselves. Their daughters they usually don't understand at all! They intimidate their wives so that the poor things don't dare call their souls their own; but the women are the saving remnant out here. And when a particularly fine one turns up she ought to be protected from the curse of our infernal commercialism."

He threw himself into a chair and lighted a cigarette.

Saxton laughed silently.

"Isn't this a new responsibility you've taken on? I don't believe these things are as bad as you make them out to be. The commercial curse is one of the things you can't dodge these days. It's just as bad in Boston as it is here; and you find it wherever you find live people who want bread to eat and cake if they can get it."

"But to visit the curse on a girl,--a fine girl,--"

"A pretty girl,--" Saxton suggested.

"A really charming girl," continued Warrick, with unabated earnestness, "is a rotten shame."

"I'm afraid you're taking it too seriously," said Saxton. "If Miss Porter were not a very sensible young woman it would be different. You don't think for a moment that she would have her head turned--"

"No, sir; not a bit of it; but it's the principle of the thing that I'm kicking about. This is one of the things that I detest in these Western towns. It's the inability to escape from their infernal business. On the face of it their Midas ball is a social event, but at the bottom, it's merely a business venture. All the business men have got to go in for it, but it doesn't stop there; they must drag their families in. Evelyn Porter has got to mix up with the daughters of the plumbers and the candlestick makers in order that the G.o.d of commerce may be satisfied."

"You don't quite grasp the situation," said Saxton. "If you had to get out among these men who have hard work to do every day you'd have a different feeling about such things. They've got to make the town go, and this carnival is one of the ways in which they can stir things up commercially, and at the same time give pleasure to a whole lot of people."

"Now look here, you know as well as I do that you can't mix up all sorts and conditions of men, and particularly women, in this way, without making a mess of it. A man may introduce the green grocer at the corner, and all that kind of ruck, to his wife and daughter, but what's the good of it?"

"Well, what's the good of a democracy anyhow?" demanded Saxton. "I used to have those ideas, too, when I was younger, but I thought it all over when I was herding cattle up in Wyoming and I renounced such notions for all time, even before I went broke. I found when I got back East that I carried my new convictions with me, and the sight of civilized people and good food did not change me."

"Well, the girl oughtn't to be sacrificed anyhow," said Warrick, spitefully.

Saxton bit his pipe hard and grinned.