The Shadow Part 35

"Chops all right?" The older man broke the silence.

"Hunky. See that fellow over there?" d.i.c.k pointed to a somewhat soiled, slouchily dressed youth who had taken a seat near them. "That's the way we look where I come from, only a heap more good-natured. Something like a mule, though, slow and kind of set-like; we could kick if it was worth while throwing out our heels. There ain't much hurry there, except if once in a lifetime you want to catch a train. Yes, and there's the factory, that's speeding up the folks."

"Miss it?" his companion asked.

"The way we do things, you mean? No, sir! I wouldn't go back, except for a vacation, not if you gave me a present of Casper County on a golden tray. I like it here; it's a race."

d.i.c.k spoke with emphasis and then took a great mouthful of food that required his full attention.

"Country boys are apt to feel that way." Mr. Talbert looked gravely at the young man before him. "The city would never grow as it does if it wasn't fed by country stock, strong young fellows who have worked out of doors and laid up energy to be exhausted later within the great buildings down town."

"I can't say as I ever did much work." The young Georgian grinned as he recalled his boyhood. "But I played a heap and made enough trouble for the neighbors to win me a gilt-edged certificate in cussedness. Business is a sort of play, I reckon, and the biggest daredevil comes out ahead."

"It means taking risks."

"Do you think," d.i.c.k asked, his cheeks flus.h.i.+ng as though he expected to be guyed for his question, "that a fellow can come to New York any more without a penny and end a millionaire?"

"They're still doing it." The business man eyed his guest with evident interest. "But the number gets smaller all the time. It's a little like telling every boy that he can become president, this poor-man-to-millionaire business; nevertheless," looking intently at his listener, "it can be done."

"Honest Injun?" The joviality left d.i.c.k's face, though he tried to put it in his voice. His thin mouth was tightly drawn and the hard lines were accentuated about his deep blue eyes.

"Honest Injun." Mr. Talbert was amused again. "But don't forget the secret. Always look out for yourself. Don't think about the other fellow, for if he's a good business man you can count on it he isn't thinking about you."

"Listen!" d.i.c.k leaned forward. "I'm meaning what I say. I've got to get rich. It ain't for myself; it's for a girl, a girl that ought to have the best of everything in New York."

For the first time during the meal he spoke in a low voice, but with an intensity that drove the smile from his companion's face. With elbows on the table, his head resting on his hands, he looked into the older man's eyes as though he hoped by searching long enough to learn the secret of success that he saw about him in this great city--the success that moved outside in silent limousines, that inhabited beautiful houses filled with skilled servants, that sent its women and children, now the warm weather advanced, into other beautiful houses by the sea. In the Sunday supplements of the great papers he had seen pictures of these homes and of the women who dwelt in them. There was not a face among the many that belonged more truly in such surroundings than the face that he looked into at his boarding-house table every day. And among the men who had won this success were some, he knew, who had started as poor as he. He asked only to be told their secret.

Mr. Talbert did not smile at the mention of the girl as d.i.c.k feared he would. Instead he looked sympathetically at the long face before him.

"A girl's a good thing to work for," he said. "It keeps a man thrifty and sober. I'm not an expert on getting rich, for such money as I have was mostly made by my father before me. But I take it if a man is young and strong and has an apt.i.tude for his profession, he can still get what he wants in these United States. But he's got to want it more than anything else in the world, more than leisure or friends, more, perhaps, than honor. He's got to carry his work with him, study it in the evening, dream of it at night. He's got to live poor before he can live rich. He must be able to use men for his own aims. He must skin or he'll be skinned. See here, Mac," clutching at a man who was pa.s.sing, "come and give your advice to youth."

A large, comfortable looking gentleman stopped at his friend's bidding and looked quizzically at d.i.c.k as they were introduced. He would not sit down, and as the others were through their meal Talbert settled his account and they all stood for a moment together.

"Have a cigar?" offering one to d.i.c.k.

"I think I won't," d.i.c.k answered. "Perhaps that's one of the things to go slow on, eh, if I mean to succeed?"

"Yes, when it comes to buying them yourself; but never refuse a gift,"

and his new acquaintance thrust the cigar into the young man's hand.

"Here's an emigrant from the State of Georgia," Talbert said, turning to his friend, "who is bent on becoming a millionaire. He's got health and determination; all he asks for is advice. What's yours?"

"David Harum's golden rule," was the answer. "Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, and do it fust."

They made their way past the waiters bearing their trays gleaming with straw-colored c.o.c.ktails, bright with fruit, pleasantly odorous with freshly cooked meats and vegetables, on out into the street. The older men continued to explain the road to success in kindly speech, their tone and bearing at variance with the harsh gospel which they preached.

d.i.c.k listened eagerly, as eagerly as he had once listened to the gospel of the evangelist at home. And as he shook hands and left them, he walked up Broadway feeling a strange elation. His hand went to his pocket for the cigar he usually smoked at this time, but, recalling himself, he put it resolutely back. He would live meagerly to-day that he might have a plethora in a golden to-morrow.

The soft May air blowing on his face recalled to him his southern home.

He had been poor down there, and yet not poor in comparison with his neighbors. His father had owned hundreds of acres of miserable soil on which his tenants had planted cotton and reaped scanty crops. He recalled those tenants--sallow, ill-fed whites, s.h.i.+ftless blacks. Their cabins reeked with dirt and were always cluttered with children. The men were continually in debt, and while his father got from them all he could, being accounted a hard master by his neighbors, d.i.c.k knew that there was little enough that any one made. It had been a good thing when his mother had sold some of the property. Had it not been for their timber they would have known real poverty. He felt a sudden revulsion for his old home, its sordidness, its slow piling of penny upon penny with no greater outlook upon life than a new rifle or a Victrola in the best room. There was no game worthy the name to be played down there, only a monotonous round of stupid covetousness. Here the play was difficult and the stakes big.

He held his head very high that afternoon, and fairly touched the clouds when, before he went home, he was informed that he would again be sent for a short time upon the road. His first trip had brought in good results and he was to be entrusted with a better circuit and to receive a slight increase in salary. He felt grateful for the advancement, and then, recalling the advice of noontime, put this thought from him. If he were getting more money it was because the firm thought he was worth it, and that they must pay more or lose him. Therefore it was to his own interest, while serving them, to be looking for advancement. In the autumn he might seek a job with Mr. Talbert.

He was enough of a boy still to buy a box of candies to take to Hertha.

Calculating that his luncheon had cost him nothing and that he would begin at once to save by smoking only one cigar a day, he spent a dollar on his gift, and with it tucked under his arm moved among the seething ma.s.s of faces, mysteriously upborne, on bodies with arms and legs, that stampeded the Brooklyn train. Once hanging to his hardly secured strap, contrary to the advice given him, he let the work of the day drop from his mind and fell into a day dream of a home of his own with Hertha as its queen. And as he thought of her, of her lightly poised head, her softly curling hair, her delicate hands, the minutes flew by and he was quite unconscious that he was standing amid a crowd of people, the women swaying on the straps to which they clung, one of them falling regularly against him at each station, the men endeavoring to read their newspapers while they balanced themselves with each recurring jolt. He was moving on as the train moved in a swift pa.s.sage through time, stopping now and again at some well-marked station along the happy road of life.

As he neared his stopping place an old question came to perplex him. Who was this girl whom he so deeply loved? Ogilvie was a fine sounding name, and any one could see that she was descended from people of note. But he was curious to know something of her kin and of her early life. It was of no use to ask his mother or any of the folks at home. As he had once put it to Hertha, they were "hill billies," far removed from her progenitors. Mrs. Pickens had confessed ignorance when he had questioned her. The one person who could tell him anything he dared not question.

There was something in Hertha's reserve that he was forced to respect, and yet he often wondered that any girl should be so wholly alone. She seemed to receive no mail. More than once, since she herself had first spoken of him, he had alluded to her brother, only to be met with a shy silence. He had never before known so silent a girl, or one, too, whom it was so difficult to interest. Sometimes when he recalled the Rosies and Annie-Lous at home over whom he had lorded it with the high hand of the best-known fellow in the county, he wondered that he should be so engrossed in one who was evidently indifferent to his advances. But he was keen enough to see that, like his coveted riches, the needed effort to gain her affection added to the intensity of his desire. But he did wish, as he clutched the candy to his side, that she would treat him a little better. They did not seem to be as near one another now as they had been in the winter when she was living with her Irish friend.

Nothing was solved as he ran up the stoop of Mrs. Pickens'

boarding-house and put his key in the latch, but he was rewarded with a bright smile when, looking in at Hertha's open doorway, he tossed the box of candy on her bed. He was never invited over the threshold of her bedroom, though it was beyond his code of etiquette to understand why.

In his mother's home the living-room contained the largest bed in the house, a ma.s.sive affair with a variegated cover that every visitor was called upon to admire. But he had learned from experience that if he entered Hertha's room she shortly left it, and so, accepting her word of thanks, he went to his own quarters to make himself ready for dinner.

At eight o'clock, when Hertha was poring over a page of shorthand, vainly endeavoring to read the business letter from "Jones Brothers" to "Smith and Company," she heard a knock at her door. Opening it, she found d.i.c.k outside.

"I told them you didn't want to be disturbed," he hastened to say in answer to her look of annoyance, "but Mrs. Pickens and Miss Wood want you to come down and make a fourth at bridge."

"Get Mrs. Wood," Hertha made answer, "you know I can't play."

"Neither can she," d.i.c.k replied cheerfully, "but she don't know it.

However, she won't," he added, "we've asked her."

Hertha looked at the page of wavering marks and hesitated.

"Oh, come along," d.i.c.k pleaded. "Do it 'to oblige Benson.' Mrs. Pickens has left a bunch of southern newspapers, just come in, to amuse us, but she wants you."

It was a standing joke in the household, the love its landlady bore for local southern news. A corner of her room was stacked with such weeklies as "The Cherokee Advocate," "The Talapoosie Ladies' Messenger," over which she would pore, reading the births and deaths, the marriages and divorces, the lawsuits and business tribulations, the receptions and engagements of the southern world as though each community were her own.

"They're my novels," she would retort when d.i.c.k jeered at her fondness for these local sheets. Hertha appreciated her unselfishness in joining the game, and, obeying an impulse to have a good time, flung down her textbook, picked up her box of candy and, accompanied by d.i.c.k, went downstairs.

The young man was elated. At Hertha's request he placed the candy in the center of the table and seized upon her as his partner without permitting the question to be decided by cutting the cards. For this Hertha was grateful, since she knew little of the game and was confident that she would spoil the good time of either of the women should they have to bear her mistakes upon their score. Of Miss Wood she stood much in awe. That lady was an a.s.sistant secretary in an a.s.sociation for Improving the Condition of the Dest.i.tute and knew a prodigious amount regarding poverty and crime. She played her cards as though solving one of her, day's cases. Mrs. Pickens had played to oblige too often to have any feeling of the importance of the game. To d.i.c.k, cards were a matter of luck; his failures were always attributed to poor hands, and with Hertha opposite him he cared little whether he ended in a pit of defeat or on a pinnacle of success.

"I wish you wouldn't talk so much about above and below the line,"

Hertha said, as they started upon a new rubber.

"Why?" Mrs. Pickens asked.

"Because it's in shorthand, and I want to forget the old stuff. All the sense of a sentence depends upon whether you're above or below."

"It's much the same in bridge," Mrs. Pickens made answer. "Now don't make it, d.i.c.k, unless you have the cards."

It was before auction bridge when the dealer's position was an important one.

"I'm not reckless, am I?" d.i.c.k asked, appealing to his partner. "I'm as careful as a donkey walking by the side of a precipice."

"Just about," said Hertha, laughing.

Forgetful of the game, he looked at her as though he would devour her.

"Perhaps you will decide on something," Miss Wood remarked sarcastically, "or let your partner."