The Empty Sack Part 19

"You haven't robbed it already, have you? Momma, do make him behave."

"Children, don't squabble, please! Teddy darling, Gussie was only poking a little fun. Sit down and have some more hash. It's made with beets in it, just the way you like it. I was reading," she continued, to divert the minds of the company, "of that teller at the Wyndham National-"

"Nicholson," Josiah put in. "I used to know him when I was at the Hudson River Trust. Sharp-eyed little ferret face, he was. Twenty-three thousand, extending over a period of five years. Often had lunch with him at the same counter. Blueberry pie was a favorite of his."

"Twenty-three thousand, extending over a period of five years!" Teddy repeated that to himself. He wondered that it hadn't struck him when he heard the fellows at the bank discussing the arrest. One of them had claimed "inside dope" as to how Nicholson had covered up his tracks, and explained the process. Teddy hadn't listened to that, because the magnitude of the theft had excluded its bearing on his own.

But there it was forcing itself on his attention, like Pansy's cold nose pressed at that minute against his hand. You could have five years'

leeway, and never be suspected. He pumped his father for further details as to Nicholson's life, learning that he had owned his home at Leffingwell Manor, where he had been a member of the golf club and a church goer.

At his own fears Teddy smiled inwardly. Twenty dollars, which would certainly be paid back in the course of a few weeks! Already he had saved seventy cents toward the restoration, just by going without his lunch, with a few economies in car fares. If he could p.a.w.n his best suit of clothes, he would have the whole sum within a fortnight. The suit had been bought for twenty-six dollars, and would certainly bring in ten. It would be a matter of dodging his mother and getting it out of the closet in her room, where she kept it in order to regulate his use of it.

As supper went on, it was little Gladys who brought up the question which some one older might have asked.

"What would happen, daddy, if you couldn't pay the interest and the taxes?"

"They could sell us out of house and home."

But this possibility being more than a week off, the statement brought no fears with it. Like all people who at the best of times are dependent on a weekly wage, the Folletts had the mental att.i.tude best described as "from hand to mouth." That is, once the dinner was secure, there was no will to worry as to where the supper was to come from. It was fundamentally a question of outlook. People used to being provided for naturally looked ahead; but where your most extended view could take you no more than from one meal to another your powers of forecast grew limited. Doubtless the provision was merciful, for, in the case of the Folletts, even the parents felt the futility of dreading a calamity more than a week away.

Of all the six, Jennie was the only one with a power of making comparisons and drawing contrasts. She had had, that day, a glimpse of a world as different from her own as paradise from earth. It was no use saying that it was different only in degree; it was different also in kind. It was different in values, in textures, in amplitudes. It was another thing, not another aspect of the same thing. Junia Collingham might be a human being like herself; but in all that was of practical account, she was as widely separated from Jennie Follett as a New Yorker from a Central African.

That was as far as Jennie got. Her mind was not given to deduction or her spirit to asking questions. Not having a G.o.d in particular, she had nothing to act as a great touchstone, to praise or to blame. Some human beings had everything; others had next to nothing. The Folletts were among "the others." Jennie didn't know how or why. She didn't ask to know. Knowing would perhaps be worse than not knowing, since it might stir rebellion where there was now only la.s.situde and resignation. But there was the fact. The Collinghams could throw her twenty-five thousand dollars as she threw a t.i.tbit to Pansy, while her father might be sold out of house and home for lack of a hundred and fifty.

Jennie mused, but she did no more. Life was too big a mystery to grapple with. If she tried it, it made her unhappy. It made her unhappy that Max should have been friendly at first, and then growled at her so resentfully. She wondered if dogs had a scent for moral and emotional atmospheres. She couldn't express this last in words, but she did it very well by thought. She often had thoughts for which she had no words, so that her inner life was broader than that which she showed outside.

It was one of the things she had noticed about Mrs. Collingham-that she had words for everything. It was like her possession of the house, the gardens, the beautiful things. They gave her s.p.a.ciousness. Her spirit moved with a larger swing. She could think, feel, express herself strongly, vividly, commandingly, while they, the Folletts, had to creep and sneak timidly along the back lanes of life.

"That's why I'm doing it," she reasoned with herself, "because I'm in the back lanes of life. I can creep and sneak along, and I can't do anything else. It was all very well for him to jostle me with his lean, iron flank and to growl; but he didn't know what twenty-five thousand would mean to me."

Along the line of these musings, Teddy said, suddenly:

"Saw young Coll to-day. Came up and spoke to me. Not half a bad sort when you get to know him."

Jennie felt a little faint, but no one noticed it, because Gussie threw back the ball.

"Tell him to come up and speak to me. Any afternoon at half past five, when I leave Corinne's."

"Say, Gus," Gladys giggled; "wouldn't you like a guy with all that wad waitin' for you every day when Corinne shuts down the lid? My! The ice-cream sodas he could blow you to!"

Lizzie was pained. It seemed to her that the process of Americanization which her children were undergoing lay chiefly in the degradation of their speech.

"Gladys darling, can't you find proper words to-"

"Oh, momma dear," Gladys complained, "do put a can on all that. If you're a cash girl, you've got to talk English, or the other girls'll whizzy you round the lot."

"Young Coll is going to South America," Teddy informed the party. "Sails with Huntley on Monday. Gos.h.!.+ Wouldn't I like to be going, too! Say, dad, why do some fellows come into the world with the way all smoothed for them and their bread b.u.t.tered in advance?"

"Because," Gussie declared, loftily, "they're clever and can get ahead, like Fred Inglis. I'll bet that if _his_ father wanted his taxes and the interest on a mortgage, he wouldn't have to raise the wind among his old friends. Fred'd be Johnny-on-the-spot with the greenbacks."

Teddy could only gulp, hang his head over his plate, and choke himself with hash, as he muttered to his soul; "G.o.d! I'll shoot that Fred Inglis if I ever get a gun."

And just as if she knew that Teddy needed comforting, Pansy sprang upon his knees, pus.h.i.+ng her face up along his breast till she could lick his chin.

Twenty-four hours later Max was vexing his soul with the difficulty of transcending planes. There was so much of which he could have warned his master, now that he had got him back from Long Island; but there was neither speech nor language, neither symbol nor sign, to make human beings understand anything but the most primitive needs and concepts.

Obedience! Disobedience! Hunger! Thirst! Sorrow! Joy! These sentiments could be put over from the dog plane to the human plane, but without shadings, subtleties, or any of the marvels of untuitive knowledge by which dogs could enlighten men if men had open faculties. To another dog, he could have flashed his information in an instant; whereas human beings could only seize ideas when they were beaten into them with verbal clubs.

Edith and Bob voted Max a nuisance because, in his agony of impotence, he pranced restlessly about the bedroom, las.h.i.+ng his tail in one tempo and pointing his ears in another. Edith had come down from the Berks.h.i.+res on hearing by wire that Bob was to leave next Monday for South America. She was seated now on the bed, her back against the footboard.

"What I don't quite see," she was saying, "is how you can be so sure."

Bob looked at her as he stood taking the studs from the soft-bosomed evening s.h.i.+rt in his hand to transfer them to the clean one lying on the bed.

"How can you be so sure about Ayling?"

"Well, that's a little different. Ernest speaks our language; he has our ways. Dad and mother make a fuss because he hasn't a lot of money; but that means no more than if he didn't wear a certain kind of hat. He's our sort, just the same."

"And I'm her sort. I can't explain it to you, Edie, but she needs me."

"How do you know she needs you? Has she ever admitted it?"

"I haven't asked her to admit it. I can see."

"Yes, that's all very fine, but-did it ever strike you, when Hubert's been talking about her, that-"

Bob made an inarticulate sound of scorn as he inserted the cuff links into a cuff.

"Oh, Hubert's a top-hole chap, all right; but my Lord!-Jennie wouldn't look across the street at him."

"But he might look across the street at Jennie; and with you so far away-"

He smiled, with something like a wink.

"Don't you fret about that. She's the kind of little woman to be true.

You can't mistake 'em."

"We've known a good many men who have mistaken them."

"You haven't known my kind to make that sort of tumble. Love can be blind; but instinct can't be. Edie, I believe so much in that girl that, if she was to play me false-But there-good Lord!-she couldn't; so why talk about it any more? See here," he added. "If you're going to change your dress, you'll have to scuttle-and I must get into my waiter's togs."

Meanwhile Dauphin's struggles were of another order. It was the hour of the day which he was accustomed to spend with Collingham, and to spend it undisturbed. In this lovely spring weather they strolled about the gardens, peeped into the hotbeds, dropped in aimlessly at the stable or the garage, exchanged odds and ends of observation with the men working around the place. After this, they returned to the house, where, upstairs, in a comfortably, masculine bedroom, the man made changes in his outer fur, while the setter, less concerned about trifles, stretched himself out on the floor and blinked. It was a restful time, suited to a mind which after the stormier years was growing more and more content with material prosperity, and to a heart that was always content with its master's contentment.

But, of late, poor Dauphin had been painfully buffeted by waves of agitation. They emanated from his master, like circlets round a stone thrown into a pool. When his master's wife came into the scene the conflict of forces was terrible. She was not straight with her lord. She was using him, hoodwinking him. Dauphin would have sprung at her throat had it not been for the knowledge that, were he to do so, he would be beaten and kicked by the object of his defense. No; you couldn't deal with human beings sensibly. The wise thing to do was to stretch on the floor and pretend to snooze while they fought their own fight.

They didn't precisely fight their own fight just now. Collingham merely accepted terms. He was picking up his evening jacket from the bed on which his valet had laid it out. Junia, dressed exactly to the mean between too little and too much suited for a family dinner, had crossed the threshold of his room, where she stood adjusting a fall of lace.