The Web of Life Part 41

"Don't try," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "I know that it has been n.o.ble and generous--on both sides," she added.

"It has ended," he answered drearily. "I don't know where to begin."

"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested.

"I haven't any friend," he replied absently. "And Alves wouldn't want any one. She would have done everything for me. I will do everything for her."

"Then I will stay here, while you are away," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k replied quickly. "Don't hurry. I will wait here in this room."

Sommers thought a moment and then answered gently: "I think not. I think Alves would rather be alone. Let me go back to the city with you. I have some errands there."

Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's face expressed her disappointment. She had triumphed impulsively over so many conventions in coming to him unasked that she felt doubly hurt.

"Very well. Only you will not always put me outside, in this way?" she implored, bravely stifling her pride. "It will not be so easy to say it later, and it will hurt if you refuse to have anything to do with my father and me."

"_I_ shall not refuse," Sommers responded warmly. "I am grateful for what you want to do."

"You know--" She completed the sentence with a sigh and prepared to accompany him. Sommers locked the door, putting the key in the usual hiding-place, and together they crossed the park to the railroad station.

There they separated.

"I shall not come out to-morrow," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k said, as if she had arrived at the decision after some wavering.

He did not urge her to come, and they shook hands.

"Remember," she said hesitatingly, "that ideas don't separate people. You must _trust_ people, those who understand and care."

"I shan't forget," he answered humbly.

On the train he remembered Webber's business, and as soon as he reached the city he went to the brokers' office. The morning session of the Exchange had just closed, and Einstein was fluttering in and out of his private office, sending telegrams and telephone messages. Sommers got his ear for a moment and explained his errand.

"I don't know anything about the stocks," he concluded. "But I think you had best close his account, as it will be some weeks before he should be troubled with such things."

"d.a.m.n shame!" Einstein remarked irritably, removing his cigar from his mouth. "I could have got him out even this morning. Now, it's too late."

As Sommers seemed ignorant of the market, the broker went on to explain, meanwhile sending a telegram:

"Most of his is Consolidated Iron--one of Carson's new promotions. Porter is in it, and a lot of big men. Splendid thing, but these new industrials are skittish as colts, and the war talk is like an early frost. Yesterday it was up to ninety, but to-day, after that Venezuelan business in the Senate, it backed down ten points. That about cleans our friend out."

"He doesn't own the stock, then?" Sommers asked.

Einstein looked at the doctor pityingly.

"He's taken a block of two hundred on margins. We hold some Baking Powder common for him, too. But he owns that."

Sommers lingered about, irresolute. He didn't like to take the responsibility of selling out Webber, nor the equal responsibility of doing nothing. Miss M'Gann's hopes, he reflected, hung on this stock trade.

"What is the prospect to-morrow?" Sommers asked timidly. He felt out of place in all the skurry of the brokers' office, where men were drinking in the last quotations as the office boy scratched them on the board.

"Dunno. Can't tell. Good, if the Senate doesn't shoot off its mouth any more."

"How much is Webber margined for?"

"Say, Phil," Einstein sang out to his partner, who came out from another cubbyhole, "how much has Webber on Iron?"

"Six points," White replied. He nodded to Sommers. The doctor remembered White as one of the negative figures of his early months in Chicago,--a smiling, slim, youthful college boy. Evidently he was the genteel member of the firm. Sommers thought again. He could not wait. "Will you carry him five points more?" he asked.

"Can you put up the money?" White replied indifferently.

"No," the doctor admitted. "But I will try to get it at once."

Einstein shook his head. But White asked, good-naturedly, "Are you sure?"

"I think so," the doctor replied.

"Well, that'll tide him over; the market is sure to go back next week."

Sommers escaped from the heated room with its noise and jostling men. He realized vaguely that he had made himself responsible for a thousand dollars--foolishly, he thought now. He had done it on the spur of the moment, with the idea that he would save Webber from a total loss, and thereby save Miss M'Gann. He felt partly responsible, too; for if he had not lingered at St. Isidore's yesterday, he could have delivered the order before the reaction had set in. He wondered, however, at his ready promise to find the thousand dollars for the extra margin. As he had told Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply for help. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those he turned himself now.

As he pa.s.sed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went up to his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alves would want near her to-morrow. Dr. Leonard came frowning out of his office, and without asking Sommers to sit down listened to what he had to say.

"Yes," he replied, without unwrinkling his old face, "I saw it in the papers. I'll come, of course I'll come. I set an awful store by Alves, poor girl! There weren't nothing right for her in this world. Maybe there will be in the next."

Sommers made no reply. He felt the kind old dentist's reproach.

"Young feller," the dentist exclaimed sharply as Sommers turned to go, "I mistrust you have much to answer for in that poor girl's case. Does your heart satisfy you that you have treated her right?"

Sommers bowed his head humbly before this blunt speech. In the sense that Dr. Leonard meant, perhaps, he was not guilty, but in other ways he was not sure. It was a difficult thing to treat any human soul justly and tenderly.

The doctor took his silence for confession.

"Well," he added, turning away and adjusting his spectacles that were lodged above his watery blue eyes, "I ain't no call to blame you. It's enough blame anyway to have hurt _her_--there wasn't a nicer woman ever born."

As Sommers left the Athenian Building, his mind reverted to the talk with the brokers. He was glad that he had undertaken to save Webber from his loss. Alves would have liked it. Miss M'Gann had been kind to her when she was learning how to teach. Probably Webber would lose the money in some other venture, but he would do what he could to save the clerk's little capital now. Where could he get the money? There was but one person on whom he could call, and overcoming his dislike of the errand he went at once to Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k.

The house was pleasantly familiar. As he waited for Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k in the little library that belonged especially to her, he could detect no changes in the conglomerate furnis.h.i.+ng of the house. He had half expected to find that it had yielded to the younger generation, but something had arrested the march of innovation. The steel engravings still hung in the hall, and the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchc.o.c.k came into the house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if it were the most natural thing to meet him there.

"I have come to ask you to do something for me," Sommers began at once, still standing, "because, as I told you, I have no one else to ask for help."

"You take the bloom off kindnesses in a dreadfully harsh way," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k responded sadly.

"But it's something one doesn't usually ask of a young woman," Sommers added. He told her briefly the circ.u.mstances that led to his visit. "I haven't literally any friend of whom I could properly ask five cents."

"Don't say that. It sounds so forlorn!"

"Does it? I never thought about it before. I suppose it is a reflection upon a man that at thirty-three he hasn't any one in the world to ask a favor of. It looks as if he had lived a pretty narrow life."

"Hard, not narrow," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k interposed quickly. "I will send the money to-morrow. John will take it to the brokers, if you will write them a note."

As he still stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horrid industrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's a born gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these new things."