The Shuttle Part 42

"Easy!" his head lifted from his pillow. "It's as easy as falling off a log. A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for its bottle. And--on the square--there isn't its equal on the market, Miss Vanderpoel--there isn't." He fumbled beneath his pillow and actually brought forth his catalogue.

"I asked the nurse to put it there. I wanted to study it now and then and think up arguments. See--adjustable to hold with perfect ease an envelope, an index card, or a strip of paper no wider than a postage stamp. Unsurpa.s.sed paper feed, practical ribbon mechanism--perfect and permanent alignment."

As Mount Dunstan had taken the book, Betty Vanderpoel took it. Never had G. Selden beheld such smiling in eyes about to bend upon his catalogue.

"You will raise your temperature," she said, "if you excite yourself.

You mustn't do that. I believe there are two or three people on the estate who might be taught to use a typewriter. I will buy three.

Yes--we will say three."

She would buy three. He soared to heights. He did not know how to thank her, though he did his best. Dizzying visions of what he would have to tell "the boys" when he returned to New York flashed across his mind.

The daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel had bought three Delkoffs, and he was the junior a.s.sistant who had sold them to her.

"You don't know what it means to me, Miss Vanderpoel," he said, "but if you were a junior salesman you'd know. It's not only the sale--though that's a rake-off of fifteen dollars to me--but it's because it's YOU that's bought them. Gee!" gazing at her with a frank awe whose obvious sincerity held a queer touch of pathos. "What it must be to be YOU--just YOU!"

She did not laugh. She felt as if a hand had lightly touched her on her naked heart. She had thought of it so often--had been bewildered restlessly by it as a mere child--this difference in human lot--this chance. Was it chance which had placed her ent.i.ty in the centre of Bettina Vanderpoel's world instead of in that of some little cash girl with hair raked back from a sallow face, who stared at her as she pa.s.sed in a shop--or in that of the young Frenchwoman whose life was spent in serving her, in caring for delicate dresses and keeping guard over ornaments whose price would have given to her own humbleness ease for the rest of existence? What did it mean? And what Law was laid upon her?

What Law which could only work through her and such as she who had been born with almost unearthly power laid in their hands--the reins of monstrous wealth, which guided or drove the world? Sometimes fear touched her, as with this light touch an her heart, because she did not KNOW the Law and could only pray that her guessing at it might be right.

And, even as she thought these things, G. Selden went on.

"You never can know," he said, "because you've always been in it. And the rest of the world can't know, because they've never been anywhere near it." He stopped and evidently fell to thinking.

"Tell me about the rest of the world," said Betty quietly.

He laughed again.

"Why, I was just thinking to myself you didn't know a thing about it.

And it's queer. It's the rest of us that mounts up when you come to numbers. I guess it'd run into millions. I'm not thinking of beggars and starving people, I've been rushing the Delkoff too steady to get onto any swell charity organisation, so I don't know about them. I'm just thinking of the millions of fellows, and women, too, for the matter of that, that waken up every morning and know they've got to hustle for their ten per or their fifteen per--if they can stir it up as thick as that. If it's as much as fifty per, of course, seems like to me, they're on Easy Street. But sometimes those that's got to fifty per--or even more--have got more things to do with it--kids, you know, and more rent and clothes. They've got to get at it just as hard as we have. Why, Miss Vanderpoel, how many people do you suppose there are in a million that don't have to worry over their next month's grocery bills, and the rent of their flat? I bet there's not ten--and I don't know the ten."

He did not state his case uncheerfully. "The rest of the world"

represented to him the normal condition of things.

"Most married men's a bit afraid to look an honest grocery bill in the face. And they WILL come in--as regular as spring hats. And I tell YOU, when a man's got to live on seventy-five a month, a thing that'll take all the strength and energy out of a twenty-dollar bill sorter gets him down on the mat."

Like old Mrs. Welden's, his roughly sketched picture was a graphic one.

"'Tain't the working that bothers most of us. We were born to that, and most of us would feel like deadbeats if we were doing nothing. It's the earning less than you can live on, and getting a sort of tired feeling over it. It's the having to make a dollar-bill look like two, and watching every other fellow try to do the same thing, and not often make the trip. There's millions of us--just millions--every one of us with his Delkoff to sell----" his figure of speech pleased him and he chuckled at his own cleverness--"and thinking of it, and talking about it, and--under his vest--half afraid that he can't make it. And what you say in the morning when you open your eyes and stretch yourself is, 'Hully gee! I've GOT to sell a Delkoff to-day, and suppose I shouldn't, and couldn't hold down my job!' I began it over my feeding bottle. So did all the people I know. That's what gave me a sort of a jolt just now when I looked at you and thought about you being YOU--and what it meant."

When their conversation ended she had a much more intimate knowledge of New York than she had ever had before, and she felt it a rich possession. She had heard of the "hall bedroom" previously, and she had seen from the outside the "quick lunch" counter, but G. Selden unconsciously escorted her inside and threw upon faces and lives the glare of a flashlight.

"There was a thing I've been thinking I'd ask you, Miss Vanderpoel," he said just before she left him. "I'd like you to tell me, if you please.

It's like this. You see those two fellows treated me as fine as silk. I mean Lord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance. I never expected it. I never saw a lord before, much less spoke to one, but I can tell you that one's just about all right--Mount Dunstan. And the other one--the old vicar--I've never taken to anyone since I was born like I took to him.

The way he puts on his eye-gla.s.ses and looks at you, sorter kind and curious about you at the same time! And his voice and his way of saying his words--well, they just GOT me--sure. And they both of 'em did say they'd like to see me again. Now do you think, Miss Vanderpoel, it would look too fresh--if I was to write a polite note and ask if either of them could make it convenient to come and take a look at me, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. I don't WANT to be too fresh--and perhaps they wouldn't come anyhow--and if it is, please won't you tell me, Miss Vanderpoel?"

Betty thought of Mount Dunstan as he had stood and talked to her in the deepening afternoon sun. She did not know much of him, but she thought--having heard G. Selden's story of the lunch--that he would come. She had never seen Mr. Penzance, but she knew she should like to see him.

"I think you might write the note," she said. "I believe they would come to see you."

"Do you?" with eager pleasure. "Then I'll do it. I'd give a good deal to see them again. I tell you, they are just It--both of them."

CHAPTER XXVII

LIFE

Mount Dunstan, walking through the park next morning on his way to the vicarage, just after post time, met Mr. Penzance himself coming to make an equally early call at the Mount. Each of them had a letter in his hand, and each met the other's glance with a smile.

"G. Selden," Mount Dunstan said. "And yours?"

"G. Selden also," answered the vicar. "Poor young fellow, what ill-luck.

And yet--is it ill-luck? He says not."

"He tells me it is not," said Mount Dunstan. "And I agree with him."

Mr. Penzance read his letter aloud.

"DEAR SIR:

"This is to notify you that owing to my bike going back on me when going down hill, I met with an accident in Stornham Park. Was cut about the head and leg broken. Little Willie being far from home and mother, you can see what sort of fix he'd been in if it hadn't been for the kindness of Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters--Miss Bettina and her sister Lady Anstruthers. The way they've had me taken care of has been great.

I've been under a nurse and doctor same as if I was Albert Edward with appendycytus (I apologise if that's not spelt right). Dear Sir, this is to say that I asked Miss Vanderpoel if I should be b.u.t.ting in too much if I dropped a line to ask if you could spare the time to call and see me. It would be considered a favour and appreciated by

"G. SELDEN,

"Delkoff Typewriter Co. Broadway.

"P. S. Have already sold three Delkoffs to Miss Vanderpoel."

"Upon my word," Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour quite glowed, "I like that queer young fellow--I like him. He does not wish to 'b.u.t.t in too much.' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And what a humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some b.u.t.ting animal--a goat, I seem to see, preferably--forcing its way into a group or closed circle of persons."

His gleeful a.n.a.lysis of the phrase had such evident charm for him that Mount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G. Selden had done at the adroit mention of Weber & Fields.

"Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour with G.

Selden, surrounded by the atmosphere of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, would be a cheering thing," he said.

"It would," Mr. Penzance answered. "Let us go by all means. We should not, I suppose," with keen delight, "be 'b.u.t.ting in' upon Lady Anstruthers too early?" He was quite enraptured with his own aptness.

"Like G. Selden, I should not like to 'b.u.t.t in,'" he added.

The scent and warmth and glow of a glorious morning filled the hour.

Combining themselves with a certain normal human gaiety which surrounded the mere thought of G. Selden, they were good things for Mount Dunstan.

Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed a big young laugh, which had, perhaps tended to the waking in him of the feeling he was suddenly conscious of--that a six-mile ride over a white, tree-dappled, sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after all, if at the end of the gallop one came again upon that other in whom life was strong and young, and bloomed on rose-cheek and was the far fire in the blue deeps of lovely eyes, and the slim straightness of the fair body, why would it not be, in a way, all to the good? He had thought of her on more than one day, and felt that he wanted to see her again.

"Let us go," he answered Penzance. "One can call on an invalid at any time. Lady Anstruthers will forgive us."

In less than an hour's time they were on their way. They laughed and talked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a cheerful ringing accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating than the hollow, regular ring and click-clack of good hoofs going well over a fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the junior a.s.sistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased by the prospect of seeing "this delightful and unusual girl." He had heard stories of her, as had Lord Westholt. He knew of old Doby's pipe, and of Mrs. Welden's respite from the Union, and though such incidents would seem mere trifles to the dweller in great towns, he had himself lived and done his work long enough in villages to know the village mind and the scale of proportions by which its gladness and sadness were measured. He knew more of all this than Mount Dunstan could, since Mount Dunstan's existence had isolated itself, from rather gloomy choice. But as he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these things.

There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in them, and such suggestion was good for any man--or woman, either--who had fallen into living in a dull, narrow groove.