Читать книгу The Making of Bobby Burnit - Chester George Randolph - Страница 8

Agnes had been surprised into an exclamation of dismay by that new sign, but she checked it abruptly as she saw Bobby’s face. She could divine, but she could not fully know, how that had hurt him; how the pain of it had sunk into his soul; how the humiliation of it had tingled in every fiber of him. For an instant his breath had stopped, his heart had swelled as if it would burst, a great lump had come in his throat, a sob almost tore its way through his clenched teeth. He caught his breath sharply, his jaws set and his nostrils dilated, then the color came slowly back to his cheeks. Agnes, though longing to do so, had feared to lay her hand even upon his sleeve in sympathy lest she might unman him, but now she saw that she need not have feared. It had not weakened him, this blow; it had strengthened him.

“That’s brutal,” he said steadily, though the steadiness was purely a matter of will. “We must change that sign before we do anything else.”

“Of course,” she answered simply.

Involuntarily she stretched out her small gloved hand, and with it touched his own. Looking back once more for a fleeting glimpse at the ascending symbol of his defeat, he gripped her hand so hard that she almost cried out with the pain of it; but she did not wince. When he suddenly remembered, with a frightened apology, and laid her hand upon her lap and patted it, her fingers seemed as if they had been compressed into a numb mass, and she separated them slowly and with difficulty. Afterward she remembered that as a dear hurt, after all, for in it she shared his pain.

While they were still stunned and silent under Silas Trimmer’s parting blow, the machine drew up at the curb in front of the building in which Chalmers had his office. Chalmers, Bobby found, was a most agreeable fellow, to whom he took an instant liking. It was strange what different qualities the man seemed to possess than when Bobby had first seen him in the company of Agnes. Their business there was very brief. Chalmers held for Bobby, subject to Agnes’ order as trustee, the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in instantly convertible securities, and when they left, Bobby had a check for that amount comfortably tucked in his pocket.

There was another brief visit to the office of old Mr. Barrister, where Agnes, again as Bobby’s trustee, exhibited the papers Chalmers had made out for her, showing that the funds previously left in her charge had been duly paid over to Bobby as per the provisions of the will, and thereupon filed her order for a similar amount. Barrister received them with an “I told you so” air which amounted almost to satisfaction. He was quite used to seeing the sons of rich men hastening to become poor men, and he had so evidently classed Bobby as one of the regular sort, that Bobby took quite justifiable umbrage and decided that if he had any legal business whatever he would put it into the hands of Chalmers.

He spent the rest of the day with Agnes and took dinner at the Ellistons’, where jolly Aunt Constance and shrewd Uncle Dan, in genuine sympathy, desisted so palpably from their usual joking about his “business career,” that Bobby was more ill at ease than if they had said all the grimly humorous things which popped into their minds. For that reason he went home rather early, and tumbled into bed resolving upon the new future he was to face to-morrow.

At least, he consoled himself with a sigh, he was now a man of experience. He had learned something of the world. He was not further to be hoodwinked. His last confused vision was of Silas Trimmer on his knees begging for mercy, and the next thing he knew was that some one was reminding him, with annoying insistency, of the early call he had left.

The world looked brighter that morning, and he was quite hopeful when, in the dim old study, seated at his father’s desk and with the portrait of stern old John Burnit frowning and yet shrewdly twinkling down upon him, he received Johnson, dry and sour looking as if he expected ill news, and Applerod, bright and radiant as if Fortune’s purse were just about to open to him.

“Well, boys,” said Bobby cheerily, “we’re going to stick right together. We’re going to start into a new business as soon as we can find one that suits us, and your employment begins from this minute. We’re beginning with a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” and rather pompously he spread the check upon the desk. His pompousness faded in something under fifteen seconds, for it was in about that length of time that he caught sight of a plain gray envelope then in the process of emerging from Johnson’s pocket. He accepted it with something of reluctance, but opened it nevertheless; and this was the message of the late John Burnit:

To my Son Upon the Occasion of his Being Intrusted With Real Money

“In most cases the difference between spending money and investing it is wholly a matter of speed. Not one man in ten knows when and where and how to put a dollar properly to work; so the only financial education I expect you to get out of an attempt to go into business is a painful lesson in subtraction.”

“This letter, Johnson, is only a delicate intimation from the governor that I’ll make another blooming ass of myself with this,” commented Bobby, tapping his finger on the check, and placing the letter face downward beside it, where he eyed it askance.

“A quarter of a million!” observed Applerod, rolling out the amount with relish. “A great deal can be done with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you know.”

“That’s just the point,” observed Bobby with a frown of perplexity, directed alternately to the faithful gentlemen who for upward of thirty years had been his father’s right and left bowers. “What am I to do with it? Johnson, what would you do with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

“Lose it,” confessed stooped and bloodless Johnson. “I never made a dollar out of a dollar in my life.”

“What would you do with it, Applerod?”

Mr. Applerod, scarcely able to contain himself, had been eagerly awaiting that question.

“Purchase, improve and market the Westmarsh Addition,” he said promptly, expanding fully two inches across his already rotund chest.

“What?” snorted Johnson, and cast upon his workmate a look of withering scorn. “Are you still dreaming about the possibilities of that old swamp?”

“To be sure it is a swamp,” admitted Mr. Applerod with some heat. “Do you suppose you could buy one hundred and twenty acres of directly accessible land, almost at the very edge of the crowded city limits, at two hundred dollars an acre if it wasn’t swamp land?” he demanded. “Why, Mr. Burnit, it is the opportunity of a lifetime!”

“How much capital would be needed?” asked Bobby, gravely assuming the callous, inquisitorial manner of the ideal business man.

“Well, I’ve managed to buy up twenty acres out of my savings, and there are still one hundred acres to be purchased, which will take twenty thousand dollars. But this is the small part of it. Drainage, filling and grading is to be done, streets and sidewalks ought to be put down, a gift club-house, which would serve at first as an office, would be a good thing to build, and the thing would have to be most thoroughly advertised. I’ve figured on it for years, and it would require, all told, about a two-hundred-thousand investment.”

“And what would be the return?” asked Bobby without blinking at these big figures, and proud of his attitude, which, while conservative, was still one of openness to conviction.

“Figure it out for yourself,” Mr. Applerod invited him with much enthusiasm. “We get ten building lots to the acre, turning one hundred and twenty acres into one thousand two hundred lots. Improved sites at any point surrounding this tract can not be bought for less than twenty-five dollars per front foot. Corner lots and those in the best locations would bring much more, but taking the average price at only six hundred dollars per lot, we would have, as a total return for the investment, seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars!”

“In how long?” Bobby inquired, not allowing himself to become in the slightest degree excited.

“One year,” announced the optimistic Mr. Applerod with conviction.

Mr. Johnson, his lips glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him with a point-blank question:

“What do you think of this opportunity, Mr. Johnson?” he asked.

Mr. Johnson glared quickly at Mr. Applerod.

“Tell him,” defied that gentleman.

“I think nothing whatever of it!” snapped Mr. Johnson.

“What is your chief ground of objection?” Bobby wanted to know.

Again Mr. Johnson glared quickly at Mr. Applerod.

“Tell him,” insisted that gentleman with an outward wave of both hands, expressive of his intense desire to have every secret of his own soul and of everybody’s else laid bare.

“I will,” said Johnson. “Your father, a dozen times in my own hearing, refused to have anything to do with the scheme.”

Bobby turned accusing eyes upon Applerod, who, though red of face, was still strong of assertion.

“Mr. Burnit never declined on any other grounds than that he already had too many irons in the fire,” he declared. “Tell him that, too, Johnson!”

“It was only his polite way of putting it,” retorted Mr. Johnson.

“John Burnit was noted for his polite way of putting his business conclusions,” snapped Applerod in return, whereat Bobby smiled with gleeful reminiscence, and Mr. Johnson smiled grimly, albeit reluctantly, and Mr. Applerod smiled triumphantly.

“I can see the governor doing it,” laughed Bobby, and dismissed the matter. “Mr. Johnson, as a start in business we may as well turn this study into a temporary office. Take this check down to the Commercial Bank, please, and open an account. You already have power of attorney for my signature. Procure a small set of books and open them. Make out for me against this account at the Commercial a check for ten thousand. Mr. Applerod, kindly reduce your swamp proposition to paper and let me have it by to-morrow. I’ll not promise that I will do anything with it, but it would be only fair to examine it.”

With these crisp remarks, upon the decisiveness of which Bobby prided himself very much, he left the two to open business for him under the supervision of the portrait of stern but humor-given old John Burnit.

“Applerod,” said Johnson indignantly, his lean frame almost quivering, “it is a wonder to me that you can look up at that picture and reflect that you are trying to drag John Burnit’s son into this fool scheme.”

“Johnson,” said Mr. Applerod, puffing out his cheeks indignantly, “you were given the first chance to advise Mr. Robert what he should do with his money, and you failed to do so. This is a magnificent business opportunity, and I should consider myself very remiss in my duty to John Burnit’s son if I failed to urge it upon him.”

Mr. Johnson picked up the letter that Bobby, evidently not caring whether they read it or not, had left behind him. He ran through it with a grim smile and handed it over to Applerod as his best retort.

At the home of Agnes Elliston Bobby’s car stopped almost as a matter of habit, and though the hour was a most informal one he walked up the steps as confidently as if he intended opening the door with a latch-key; for since Agnes was become his trustee, Bobby had awakened, overnight, to the fact that he had a proprietary interest in her which could not be denied.

Agnes came down to meet him in a most ravishing morning robe of pale green, a confection so stunning in conjunction with her gold-brown eyes and waving brown hair and round white throat that Bobby was forced to audible comment upon it.

“Cracking!” said he. “I suppose that if I hadn’t had nerve enough to pop in here unexpectedly before noon I wouldn’t have seen that gown for ages.”

It was Aunt Constance, the irrepressible, who, leaning over the stair railing, sank the iron deep into his soul.

“It was bought at Trimmer and Company’s, Grand Street side, Bobby,” she informed him, and with this Parthian shot she went back through the up-stairs hall, laughing.

“Ouch!” said Bobby. “That was snowballing a cripple,” and he was really most woebegone about it.

“Never mind, Bobby, you have still plenty of chance to win,” comforted Agnes, who, though laughing, had sympathetic inkling of that sore spot which had been touched. He seemed so forlorn, in spite of his big, good-natured self, that she moved closer to him and unconsciously put her hand upon his arm. It was too much for him in view of the way she looked, and, suddenly emboldened, he did a thing the mere thought of which, under premeditation, would have scared him into a frappéd perspiration. He placed his hands upon her shoulders, and, drawing her toward him, bent swiftly down to kiss her. For a fleeting instant she drew back, and then Bobby had the surprise of his life, for her warm lips met his quite willingly, and with a frank pressure almost equal to his own. She sprang back from him at once with sparkling eyes, but he had no mind to follow up his advantage, for he was dazed. It had left him breathless, amazed, incredulous. He stood for a full minute, his face gone white with the overwhelming wonder of this thing that had happened to him, and then the blunt directness which was part of his inheritance from his father returned to him.

“Well, anyhow, we’re to be engaged at last,” he said.

“No,” she rebuked him, with a sudden flash of mischief; “that was perfectly wicked, and you mustn’t do it again.”

“But I will,” he said, advancing with heightened color.

“You mustn’t,” she said firmly, and although she did not recede farther from him he stopped. “You mustn’t make it hard for us, Bobby,” she warned him. “I’m under promise, too; and that’s all I can tell you now.”

“The governor again,” groaned Bobby. “I suppose that I’m not to talk to you about marrying, nor you to listen, until I have proved my right and ability to take care of you and your fortune and mine. Is that it?”

She smiled inscrutably.

“What brings you at this unearthly hour?” she asked by way of evasion. “Some business pretext, I’ll be bound.”

“Of course it is,” he assured her. “This morning you are strictly in the rôle of my trustee. I want you to look at some property.”

“But I have an appointment with my dressmaker.”

“The dressmaker must wait.”

“What a warning!” she laughed. “If you would order a mere – a mere acquaintance around so peremptorily, what would you do if you were married?”

“I’d be the boss,” announced Bobby with calm confidence.

“Indeed?” she mocked, and started into the library. “You’d ask permission first, wouldn’t you?”

“Where are you going?” he queried in return, and grinned.

“To telephone my dressmaker,” she admitted, smiling, and realizing, too, that it was not all banter.

“I told you to, remember,” asserted Bobby, with a strange new sense of masterfulness which would not down.

When she came down again, dressed for the trip, he was still in that dazed elation, and it lasted through their brisk ride to the far outskirts of the city, where, at the side of a watery marsh that extended for nearly a mile along the roadway, he halted.

“This is it,” waving his hand across the dismal waste.

“It!” she repeated. “What?”

“The property that it was suggested I buy.”

“No wonder your father thought it necessary to appoint a trustee,” was her first comment. “Why, Bobby, what on earth could you do with it? It’s too large for a frog farm and too small for a summer resort,” and once more she turned incredulous eyes upon the “property.”

Dark, oily water covered the entire expanse, and through it emerged, here and there, clumps of dank vegetation, from the nature and dispersement of which one could judge that the water varied from one to three feet in depth. Higher ground surrounded it on all sides, and the urgent needs of suburban growth had scattered a few small, cheap cottages, here and there, upon the hills.

“It doesn’t seem very attractive until you consider those houses,” Bobby confessed. “You must remember that the city hasn’t room to grow, and must take note that it is trying to spread in this direction. Wouldn’t a fellow be doing a rather public-spirited thing, and one in which he might take quite a bit of satisfaction, if he drained that swamp, filled it, laid out streets and turned the whole stretch into a cluster of homes in place of a breeding-place for fevers?”

“You talk just like a civic improvement society,” she said, laughing.

“We did have a chap lecturing on that down at the club a few nights ago,” he admitted, “and maybe I have picked up a bit of the talk. But wouldn’t it be a good thing, anyhow?”

“Oh, I quite approve of it, now that I see your plan,” she agreed; “but could it be made to pay?”

“Well,” he returned with a grave assumption of that businesslike air he had recently been trying to copy down at the Traders’ Club, “there are one hundred and twenty acres in the tract. I can buy it for two hundred dollars an acre, and sell each acre, in building lots, for full six hundred. It seems to me that this is enough margin to carry out the needed improvements and make the marketing of it worth while. What do you think of it?”

They both gazed out over that desolate expanse and tried to picture it dotted with comfortable cottages, set down in grassy lawns that bordered on white, clean streets, and the idea of the transformation was an attractive one.

“It looks to me like a perfectly splendid idea,” Agnes admitted. “I wonder what your father would have thought of it.”

“Well,” confessed Bobby a trifle reluctantly, “this very proposition was presented to him several times, I believe, but he always declined to go into it.”

“Then,” decided Agnes, so quickly and emphatically that it startled him, “don’t touch it!”

“Oh, but you see,” he reminded her, “the governor couldn’t go into everything that was offered him, and to this plan he never urged any objection but that he had too many irons in the fire.”

“I wouldn’t touch it,” declared Agnes, and that was her final word in the matter, despite all his arguments. If John Burnit had declined to go into it, no matter for what reason, the plan was not worth considering.