Dennison Grant Part 22

"I don't believe you are," Grant admitted. "You are a remarkable woman.

I think we shall get along all right if you are able to distinguish between independence and bravado." He turned to his desk, then suddenly looked up again. He was homesick for someone he could talk to frankly.

"I don't mind telling you," he said abruptly, "that the deference which is being showered upon me around this inst.i.tution gives me a good deal of a pain. I've been accustomed to working with men on the same level.

They took their orders from me, and they carried them out, but the older hands called me by my first name, and any of them swore back when he thought he had occasion. I can't fit in to this 'Yes sir,' 'No sir,'

'Very good, sir,' way of doing business. It doesn't ring true."

"I know what you mean," she said. "There's too much servility in it. And yet one may pay these courtesies and not be servile. I always 'sir'd'

your father, and he knew I did it because I wanted to, not because I had to. And I shall do the same with you once we understand each other. The position I want to make clear is this: I don't admit that because I work for you I belong to a lower order of the human family than you do, and I don't admit that, aside from the giving of faithful service, I am under any obligation to you. I give you my labor, worth so much; you pay me; we're square. If we can accept that as an understanding I'm ready to begin work now; if not, I'm going out to look for another job."

"I think we can accept that as a working basis," he agreed.

She produced notebook and pencil. "Very well, SIR. Do you wish to dictate?"

The selection of a place to call home was a matter demanding Grant's early attention. He discussed it with Mr. Jones.

"Of course you will take members.h.i.+ps in some of the better clubs," the lawyer had suggested. "It's the best home life there is. That is why it is not to be recommended to married men; it has a tendency to break up the domestic circle."

"But it will cost more than I can afford."

"Nonsense! You could buy out one of their clubs, holus-bolus, if you wanted to."

"You don't quite get me," said Grant. "If I used the money which was left by my father, or the income from the business, no doubt I could do as you say. But I feel that that money isn't really mine. You see, I never earned it, and I don't see how a person can, morally, spend money that he did not earn."

"Then there are a great many immoral people in the world," the lawyer observed, dryly.

"I am disposed to agree with you," said Grant, somewhat pointedly. "But I don't intend that they shall set my standards."

"You have your salary. That comes under the head of earnings, if you are finnicky about the profits. What do you propose to pay yourself?"

"I have been thinking about that. On the ranch I got a hundred dollars a month, and board."

"Well, your father got twenty thousand a year, and Roy half that, and if they wanted more they charged it up as expenses."

"Considering the cost of board here, I think I would be justified in taking two hundred dollars a month," Grant continued.

Jones got up and took the young man by the shoulders. "Look here, Grant, you're not taking yourself seriously. I don't want to a.s.sail your pet theories--you'll grow out of them in time--but you hired me to give you advice, and right here I advise you not to make a fool of yourself. You are now in a big position; you're a big man, and you've got to live in a big way. If for nothing else than to hold the confidence of the public you must do it. Do you think they're going to intrust their investments to a firm headed by a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man?"

"But I AM a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man. In fact, I'm not sure I'm worth quite that much. I've got no more muscle, and no more sense, and very little more experience than I had a month ago, when in the open market my services commanded a hundred and board."

"When a man is big enough--or his job is big enough--" Jones argued, "he arises above the ordinary law of supply and demand. In fact, in a sense, he controls supply and demand. He puts himself in the job and dictates the salary. You have a perfect right to pay yourself what other men in similar positions are getting. Besides, as I said, you'll have to do so for the credit of the firm. Do you call a doctor who lives in a tumble-down tenement? You do not. You call one from a fine home; you select him for his appearance of prosperity, regardless of the fact that he may have mortgaged his future to create that appearance, and of the further fact that he will charge you a fee calculated to help pay off the mortgage. When you want a lawyer, do you seek some garret pract.i.tioner? You do not. You go to a big building, with a big name plate"--the pugnacious moustache gave hint of a smile gathering beneath--"and you pay a big price for a man with an office full of imposing-looking books, not a tenth part of which he has ever read, or intends ever to read. I admit there's a good deal of bunco in the game, but if you sit in you've got to play it that way, or the dear public will throw you into the discard. Many a man who votes himself a salary in five figures--or gets a friendly board of directors to do it for him--if thrown unfriended between the millstones of supply and demand probably couldn't qualify for your modest hundred dollars a month and board. But he has risen into a different world; instead of being dictated to, he dictates. That is your position, Grant. Look at it sensibly."

"Nevertheless, I shall get along on two hundred a month. If I find it necessary in order to protect the interests of the business to take a members.h.i.+p in an expensive club, or commit any other extravagance, I shall do so, and charge it up as a business expense. Besides, I think I can be happier that way."

"And in the meantime your business is piling up profits. What are you going to do with them? Give them away?"

"No. That, too, is immoral--whether it be a quarter to a beggar or a library to a city. It feeds the desire to get money without earning it, which is the most immoral of all our desires. I have not yet decided what I shall do with it. I have hired an expert, in you, to show me how to make money. I shall probably find it necessary to hire another to show me how to dispose of it. But not a dollar will be given away."

"And so you would let the beggar starve? That's a new kind of altruism."

"No. I would correct the conditions that made him a beggar. That's the only kind of altruism that will make him something better than a beggar."

"Some people would beg in any case, Grant. They are incapable of anything better."

"Then they are defectives, and should be cared for by the State."

"Then the State may practise charity--"

"It is not charity; it is the discharge of an obligation. A father may support his children, but he must not let anyone else do it."

"Well, I give up," said Jones. "You're beyond me."

Grant laughed and extended a cigar box. "Don't hesitate," he said, "this doesn't come out of the two hundred. This is entertainment expense. And you must come and see me when I get settled."

"When you get settled--yes. You won't be settled until you're married, and you might as well do some thinking about that. A man in your position gets a pretty good range of choice; you'd be surprised if you knew the wire-pulling I have already encountered; ambitious old dames fis.h.i.+ng for introductions for their daughters. You may be an expert with rope or branding-iron, but you're outcla.s.sed in this matrimonial game, and some one of them will land you one of these times before you know it. You should be very proud," and Mr. Jones struck something of an att.i.tude. "The youth and beauty of the city are raving about you."

"About my money," Grant retorted. "If my father had had time to change his will they would every one of them have pa.s.sed me by with their noses in the air. As for marrying--that's all off."

The lawyer was about to aim a humorous sally, but something in Grant's appearance closed his lips. "Very well, I'll come and see you if you say when," he agreed.

Grant found what he wanted in a little apartment house on a side street, overlooking the lake. Here was a place where the vision could leap out without being beaten back by barricades of stone and brick. He rested his eyes on the distance, and a.s.sured the inveigling landlady that the rooms would do, and he would arrange for decorating at his own expense.

There was a living-room, about the size of his shack on the Landson ranch; a bathroom, and a kitchenette, and the rent was twenty-two dollars a month. A decorator was called in to repaper the bathroom and kitchenette, but for the living-room Grant engaged a carpenter.

He ordered that the inside of the room should be boarded up with rough boards, with exposed scantlings on the walls and ceiling. No doubt the tradesman thought his patron mad, or nearly so, but his business was to obey orders, and when the job was completed it presented a very pa.s.sable duplicate of Grant's old quarters on the ranch. He had spared the fireplace, as a concession to comfort. When he had gotten his personal effects out of storage, when he had hung rifle, saddle and lariat from spikes in the wall; had built a little book-shelf and set his old favorites upon it; had installed his bed and the trunk with the big D. G.; sitting in his arm chair before the fire, with Fidget's nose snuggled companionably against his foot, he would not have traded his quarters for the finest suite in the most expensive club in the city.

Here was something at least akin to home.

As he was arranging the books on his shelf the clipping with the account of Zen's wedding fell to the floor. He sat down in his chair and read it slowly through. Later he went out for a walk.

It was in his long walks that Grant found the only real comfort of his new life. To be sure, it was not like roaming the foothills; there was not the soft breath of the Chinook, nor the deep silence of the mighty valleys. But there was movement and freedom and a chance to think.

The city offered artificial attractions in which the foothills had not competed; faultlessly kept parks and lawns; splashes of perfume and color; spraying fountains and vagrant strains of music. He reflected that some merciful principle of compensation has made no place quite perfect and no place entirely undesirable. He remembered also the toll of his life in the saddle; the physical hards.h.i.+p, the strain of long hours and broken weather. And here, too, in a different way, he was in the saddle, and he did not know which strain was the greater. He was beginning to have a higher regard for the men in the saddle of business.

The world saw only their success, or, it may be, their pretence of success. But there was a different story from all that, which each one of them could have told for himself.

On this evening when his mind had been suddenly turned into old channels by the finding of the newspaper clipping dealing with the wedding of Y.D.'s daughter, Grant walked far into the outskirts of the city, paying little attention to his course. It was late October; the leaves lay thick on the sidewalks and through the parks; there was in all the air that strange, sad, sweet dreariness of the dying summer.... Grant had tried heroically to keep his thoughts away from Transley's wife. The past had come back on him, had rather engulfed him, in that little newspaper clipping. He let himself wonder where she was, and whether nearly a year of married life had shown her the folly of her decision.

He took it for granted that her decision had been folly, and he arrived at that position without any reflection upon Transley. Only--Zen had been in love with him, with him, Dennison Grant! Sooner or later she must discover the tragedy of that fact, and yet he told himself he was big enough to hope she might never discover it. It would be best that she should forget him, as he had--almost--forgotten her. There was no doubt that would be best. And yet there was a delightful sadness in thinking of her still, and hoping that some day--He was never able to complete the thought.

He had been walking down a street of modest homes; the bare trees groped into a sky clear and blue with the first chill presage of winter. A quick step fell unheeded by his side; the girl pa.s.sed, hesitated, then turned and spoke.

"You are preoccupied, Mr. Grant."

"Oh, Miss Bruce, I beg your pardon. I am glad to see you." Even at that moment he had been thinking of Zen, and perhaps he put more cordiality into his words than he intended. But he had grown to have considerable regard, on her own account, for this unusual girl who was not afraid of him. He had found that she was what he called "a good head." She could take a detached view; she was absolutely fair; she was not easily fl.u.s.tered.

Her step had fallen into swing with his.

"You do not often visit our part of the city," she essayed.

"You live here?"

"Near by. Will you come and see?"

He turned with her at a corner, and they went up a narrow street lying deep in dead leaves. Friendly domestic glimpses could be caught through unblinded windows.