A Modern Instance Part 54

"There are some very disagreeable stories about it. They say he was turned away by Mr. Witherby for behaving badly,--for printing something he oughtn't to have done."

"That was to have been expected," said Halleck.

"He hasn't found any other place, and Marcia says he gets very little work to do. He must be running into debt, terribly. I feel very anxious about them. I don't know what they're living on."

"Probably on some money I lent him," said Halleck, quietly. "I lent him fifteen hundred in the spring. It ought to make him quite comfortable for the present."

"Oh, Ben! Why did you lend him money? You might have known he wouldn't do any good with it."

Halleck explained how and why the loan had been made, and added: "If he's supporting his family with it, he's doing some good. I lent it to him for her sake."

Halleck looked hardily into his sister's face, but he dropped his eyes when she answered, simply: "Yes, of course. But I don't believe she knows anything about it; and I'm glad of it: it would only add to her trouble.

She wors.h.i.+ps you, Ben!"

"Does she?"

"She seems to think you are perfect, and she never comes here but she asks when you're to be home. I suppose she thinks you have a good influence on that miserable husband of hers. He's going from bad to worse, I guess.

Father heard that he is betting on the election. That's what he's doing with your money."

"It would be somebody else's money if it wasn't mine," said Halleck.

"Bartley Hubbard must live, and he must have the little excitements that make life agreeable."

"Poor thing!" sighed Olive, "I don't know what she would do if she heard that you were going away. To hear her talk, you would think she had been counting the days and hours till you got back. It's ridiculous, the way she goes on with mother; asking everything about you, as if she expected to make Bartley Hubbard over again on your pattern. I should hate to have anybody think me such a saint as she does you. But there isn't much danger, thank goodness! I could laugh, sometimes, at the way she questions us all about you, and is so delighted when she finds that you and that wretch have anything in common. But it's all too miserably sad. She certainly _is_ the most single-hearted creature alive," continued Olive, reflectively.

"Sometimes she _scares_ me with her innocence. I don't believe that even her jealousy ever suggested a wicked idea to her: she's furious because she feels the injustice of giving so much more than he does. She hasn't really a thought for anybody else: I do believe that if she were free to choose from now till doomsday she would always choose Bartley Hubbard, bad as she knows him to be. And if she were a widow, and anybody else proposed to her, she would be utterly shocked and astonished."

"Very likely," said Halleck, absently.

"I feel very unhappy about her," Olive resumed. "I know that she's anxious and troubled all the time. _Can't_ you do something, Ben? Have a talk with that disgusting thing, and see if you can't put him straight again, somehow?"

"No!" exclaimed Halleck, bursting violently from his abstraction. "I shall have nothing to do with them! Let him go his own way and the sooner he goes to the--I won't interfere,--I can't, I mustn't! I wonder at you, Olive!" He pushed away from the table, and went limping about the room, searching here and there for his hat and stick, which were on the desk where he had put them, in plain view. As he laid hand on them at last, he met his sister's astonished eyes. "If I interfered, I should not interfere because I cared for _him_ at all!" he cried.

"Of course not," said Olive. "But I don't see anything to make you _wonder_ at me about that."

"It would be because I cared for her--"

"Certainly! You didn't suppose I expected you to interfere from any other motive?"

He stood looking at her in stupefaction, with his hand on his hat and stick, like a man who doubts whether he has heard aright. Presently a s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed over him, another light came into his eyes, and he said quietly, "I'm going out to see Atherton."

"To-night?" said his sister, accepting provisionally, as women do, the apparent change of subject. "Don't go to-night, Ben! You're too tired."

"I'm not tired. I intended to see him to-night, at any rate. I want to talk over this South American scheme with him." He put on his hat, and moved quickly toward the door.

"Ask him about the Hubbards," said Olive. "Perhaps he can tell you something."

"I don't want to know anything. I shall ask him nothing."

She slipped between him and the door. "Ben, you haven't heard anything against poor Marcia, have you?"

"No!"

"You don't think she's to blame in any way for his going wrong, do you?

"How could I?"

"Then I don't understand why you won't do anything to help her."

He looked at her again, and opened his lips to speak once, but closed them before he said, "I've got my own affairs to worry me. Isn't that reason enough for not interfering in theirs?"

"Not for you, Ben."

"Then I don't choose to mix myself up in other people's misery. I don't like it, as you once said."

"But you can't help it sometimes, as _you_ said."

"I can this time, Olive. Don't you see,--" he began.

"I see there's something you won't tell me. But I shall find it out." She threatened him half playfully.

"I wish you could," he answered. "Then perhaps you'd let me know." She opened the door for him now, and as he pa.s.sed out he said gently, "I _am_ tired, but I sha'n't begin to rest till I have had this talk with Atherton.

I had better go."

"Yes," Olive a.s.sented, "you'd better." She added in banter, "You're altogether too mysterious to be of much comfort at home."

The family heard him close the outside door behind him after Olive came back to them, and she explained, "He's gone out to talk it over with Mr.

Atherton."

His father gave a laugh of relief. "Well, if he leaves it to Atherton, I guess we needn't worry about it."

"The child isn't at all well," said his mother.

x.x.xIII.

Halleck met Atherton at the door of his room with his hat and coat on.

"Why, Halleck! I was just going to see if you had come home!"

"You needn't now," said Halleck, pus.h.i.+ng by him into the room. "I want to see you, Atherton, on business."

Atherton took off his hat, and closed the door with one hand, while he slipped the other arm out of his overcoat sleeve. "Well, to tell the truth, I was going to mingle a little business myself with the pleasure of seeing you." He turned up the gas in his drop-light, and took the chair from which he had looked across the table at Halleck, when they talked there before.

"It's the old subject," he said, with a sense of repet.i.tion in the situation. "I learn from Witherby that Hubbard has taken that money of yours out of the Events, and from what I hear elsewhere he is making ducks and drakes of it on election bets. What shall you do about it?"

"Nothing," said Halleck.

"Oh! Very well," returned Atherton, with the effect of being a little snubbed, but resolved to take his snub professionally. He broke out, however, in friendly exasperation: "Why in the world did you lend the fellow that money?"