Peter Part 44

"You are right, dearest. These things make me love you more. You are so splendid, Jack. And you never disappoint me. It is Garry's poor little boy who must be protected. Everybody would pity the wife, but n.o.body would pity the child. He will always be pointed at when he grows up.

Dear little tot! He lay in my arms so sweet and fresh this morning, and put his baby hands upon my cheek, and looked so appealingly into my face. Oh, Jack, we must help him. He has done nothing."

They were sitting together as she spoke, her head on his shoulder, her fingers held tight in his strong, brown hand. She could get closer to him in this position, she always told him: these hands and cheeks were the poles of a battery between which flowed and flashed the vitality of two sound bodies, and through which quivered the ecstasy of two souls.

Suddenly the thought of Garry and what he had been, in the days of his brilliancy, and of what he had done to crush the lives about him came to her. Could she not find some excuse for him, something which she might use as her own silent defence of him in the years that were to come?

"Do you think Garry was out of his mind, Jack? He's been so depressed lately?" she asked, all her sympathy in her voice.

"No, my blessed, I don't think so. Everybody is more or less insane who succ.u.mbs to a crisis. Garry believed absolutely in himself and his luck, and when the cards went against him he collapsed. And yet he was no more a criminal at heart than I am. But that is all over now. He has his punishment, poor boy, and it is awful when you think of it. How he could bring himself to prove false to his trust is the worst thing about it.

This is a queer world, my darling, in which we live. I never knew much about it until lately. It is not so at home, or was not when I was a boy--but here you can take away a man's character, rob him of his home, corrupt his children. You can break your wife's heart, be cruel, revengeful; you can lie and be tricky, and no law can touch you--in fact, you are still a respectable citizen. But if you take a dollar-bill out of another man's cash drawer, you are sent to jail and branded as a thief. And it is right--looked at from one standpoint--the protection of society. It is the absence of all mercy in the enforcement of the law that angers me."

Ruth moved her head and nestled the closer. How had she lived all the years of her life, she thought to herself, without this shoulder to lean on and this hand to guide her? She made no answer. She had never thought about these things in that way before, but she would now. It was so restful and so blissful just to have him lead her, he who was so strong and self-reliant, and whose vision was so clear, and who never dwelt upon the little issues. And it was such a relief to reach up her arms and kiss him and say, "Yes, blessed," and to feel herself safe in his hands. She had never been able to do that with her father. He had always leaned on her when schemes of economies were to be thought out, or details of their daily lives planned. All this was changed now. She had found Jack's heart wide open and had slipped inside, his strong will henceforth to be hers.

Still cuddling close, her head on his shoulder, her heart going out to him as she thought of the next morning and the task before him, she talked of their coming move to the mountains, and of the log-cabin for which Jack had already given orders; of the approaching autumn and winter and what they would make of it, and of dear daddy's plans and profits, and of how long they must wait before a larger log-cabin--one big enough for two--would be theirs for life--any and every topic which she thought would divert his mind--but Garry's ghost would not down.

"And what are you going to do first, my darling?" she asked at last, finding that Jack answered only in monosyllables or remained silent altogether.

"I am going to see Uncle Arthur in the morning," he answered quickly, uncovering his brooding thoughts. "It won't do any good, perhaps, but I will try it. I have never asked him for a cent for myself, and I won't now. He may help Corinne this time, now that Garry is dead. There must be some outside money due Garry that he has not been able to collect--commissions on unfinished work. This can be turned in when it is due. Then I am going to Uncle Peter, and after that to some of the people we trade with."

Breen was standing by the ticker when Jack entered. It was a busy day in the Street and values were going up by leaps and bounds. The broker was not in a good humor; many of his customers were short of the market.

He followed Jack into his private office and faced him.

"Funeral's at one o'clock Sunday, I see," he said in a sharp voice, as if he resented the incident. "Your aunt and I will be out on the noon train. She got back this morning, pretty well bunged up. Killed himself, didn't he?"

"That is not the doctor's opinion, sir, and he was with him when he died."

"Well, it looks that way to me. He's busted--and all balled up in the Street. If you know anybody who will take the lease off Corinne's hands, let me know. She and the baby are coming to live with us."

Jack replied that he would make it his business to do so, with pleasure, and after giving his uncle the details of Garry's death he finally arrived at the tangled condition of his affairs.

Breen promptly interrupted him.

"Yes, so Corinne told me. She was in here one day last week and wanted to borrow ten thousand dollars. I told her it didn't grow on trees.

Suppose I had given it to her? Where would it be now. Might as well have thrown it in the waste-basket. So I shut down on the whole business--had to."

Jack waited until his uncle had relieved his mind. The state of the market had something to do with his merciless point of view; increasing irritability, due to loss of sleep, and his habits had more. The outburst over, Jack said in a calm direct voice, watching the effect of the words as a gunner watches a sh.e.l.l from his gun:

"Will you lend it to me, sir?"

Arthur was pacing his private office, casting about in his mind how to terminate the interview, when Jack's shot overhauled him. Garry's sudden death had already led him to waste a few more minutes of his time than he was accustomed to on a morning like this, unless there was business in it.

He turned sharply, looked at Jack for an instant, and dropped into the revolving chair fronting his desk.

Then he said in a tone of undisguised surprise:

"Lend you ten thousand dollars! What for?"

"To clear up some matters of Garry's at Corklesville. The Warehouse matter has been closed out, so Corinne tells me."

"Oh, that's it, is it? I thought you wanted it for yourself. Who signs for it?"

"I do."

"On what collateral?"

"My word."

Breen leaned back in his chair. The unsophisticated innocence of this boy from the country would be amusing if it were not so stupid.

"What are you earning, Jack?" he said at last, with a half-derisive, half-humorous expression on his face.

"A thousand dollars a year." Jack had never taken his eyes from his uncle's face, nor had he moved a muscle of his body.

"And it would take you ten years to pay it if you dumped it all in?"

"Yes."

"Got anything else to offer?" This came in a less supercilious tone. The calm, direct manner of the young man had begun to have its effect.

"Nothing but my ore property."

"That's good for nothing. I made a mistake when I wanted you to put it in here. Glad you didn't take me up."

"So am I. My own investigation showed the same thing."

"And the ore's of poor quality," continued Breen in a decided tone.

"Very poor quality, what I saw of it," rejoined Jack.

"Well, we will check that off. MacFarlane got any thing he could turn in?"

"No--and I wouldn't ask him."

"And you mean to tell me, Jack, that you are going broke yourself to help a dead man pay his debts?"

"If you choose to put it that way."

"Put it that way? Why, what other way is there to put it? You'll excuse me, Jack--but you always were a fool when your d.a.m.ned idiotic notions of what is right and wrong got into your head--and you'll never get over it. You might have had an interest in my business by this time, and be able to write your check in four figures; and yet here you are cooped up in a Jersey village, living at a roadside tavern, and getting a thousand dollars a year. That's what your father did before you; went round paying everybody's debts; never could teach him anything; died poor, just as I told him he would."

Jack had to hold on to his chair to keep his mouth closed. His father's memory was dangerous ground for any man to tread on--even his father's brother; but the stake for which he was playing was too great to be risked by his own anger.

"No, Jack," Breen continued, gathering up a ma.s.s of letters and jamming them into a pigeon-hole in front of him, as if the whole matter was set forth in their pages and he was through with it forever. "No--I guess I'll pa.s.s on that ten thousand-dollar loan. I am sorry, but A. B. & Co, haven't any shekels for that kind of tommy-rot. As to your helping Minott, what I've got to say to you is just this: let the other fellow walk--the fellow Garry owes money to--but don't you b.u.t.t in. They'll only laugh at you. Now you will have to excuse me--the market's kiting, and I've got to watch it. Give my love to Ruth. Your aunt and I will be out on the noon train for the funeral. Good-by."

It was what he had expected. He would, perhaps, have stood a better chance if he had read him Peter's encouraging letter of the director's opinion of his c.u.mberland property, and he might also have brought him up standing (and gone away with the check in his pocket) if he had told him that the money was to save his own wife's daughter and grandchild from disgrace--but that secret was not his. Only as a last, desperate resource would he lay that fact bare to a man like Arthur Breen, and perhaps not even then. John Breen's word was, or ought to be, sacred enough on which to borrow ten thousand dollars or any other sum. That meant a mortgage on his life until every cent was paid.

Do not smile, dear reader. He is only learning his first lesson in modern finance. All young men "raised" as Jack had been--and the Scribe is one of them--would have been of the same mind at his age. In a great city, when your tea-kettle starts to leaking, you never borrow a whole one from your neighbor; you send to the shop at the corner and buy another. In the country--Jack's country, I mean--miles from a store, you borrow your neighbor's, who promptly borrows your saucepan in return.

And it was so in larger matters: the old Chippendale desk with its secret drawer was often the bank--the only one, perhaps, in a week's journey. It is astonis.h.i.+ng in these days to think how many dingy, tattered or torn bank-notes were fished out of these same receptacles and handed over to a neighbor with the customary--"With the greatest pleasure, my dear sir. When you can sell your corn or hogs, or that mortgage is paid off, you can return it." A man who was able to lend, and who still refused to lend, to a friend in his adversity, was a pariah. He had committed the unpardonable sin. And the last drop of the best Madeira went the same way and with equal graciousness!