Читать книгу The Last Penny - Edwin Lefèvre - Страница 6

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MAGGIE brought the Herald to Tommy. He had remained in the library, trying to think. When he discovered that he couldn't he rose and walked about the gloomy little room, angry with himself because his emotions prevented the cogs of his mind-machine from falling into their appointed places. He decided that he must face his problem squarely, systematically, calmly, efficiently.

The first thing to do was not to walk about the library like a wild beast in a menagerie cage. He lit a cigarette and resolutely sat down.

He smoked away, and compelled himself to understand that his problem consisted in evolving a plan or a set of plans having for an object the accumulation of money. The amount was seventeen thousand dollars, since that was what he had cost his father. It was there in black and white, to the last penny, in the little book bound in mourning morocco.

He stretched his hand toward the little book on the table, but drew it back, empty. He would not read the items. It didn't matter how the money had been spent. It was enough to know that all of it must be paid back.

Seventeen thousand dollars! It did not mean any more to Tommy than five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or any other number of dollars.

He lit another cigarette. Presently the fear came upon him that it might take a long time to earn the money, to earn any money. Discovery, the discovery he so dreaded, had fleet feet. He must do something—and do it at once.

He took up the Herald and read the “Help Wanted—Male” column. He began at the first line, and as he read on he was filled with surprise at the number of men wanted by employers. He marked two private secretaryships and a dozen selling agencies, which divulged no details, but promised great and quick wealth to the right man. He knew that he would work like a cyclone. He, therefore, must be the right man. In fact, he knew he was! And then he came upon this:

Wanted—A College Man. No high-brow, no football hero, no Happy Jack, no erudite scholar, but a Man recently graduated from College, whose feet are on terra firma and the head not more than six feet one inch above same. If he is a Man to-day we shall make him into The Man We Want to-morrow. Apply X-Y-Z, P. O. Box 777, Dayton, Ohio.

Thomas Leigh thrilled. It was a wonderful message. He clenched his own fist to prove to himself that he himself was a man. He was willing to do anything, therefore it did not matter what “X-Y-Z” wanted him to do. And also this was in Dayton, Ohio. Whatever he did must be done far away from New York. He hated New York because all the people he loved lived there.

He was about to light another cigarette when the thought came to him that smoking was one of the habits he must give up as entailing unnecessary expense. Unnecessary expenses meant delay in the full settlement of the debt he had taken upon himself to pay. He threw the unlighted cigarette on the table vindictively. He would work at anything, night and day, like a madman!

Thrilled by the intensity of his own resolve, his mind began to work feverishly. He was no longer Tommy Leigh, but a man who did his thinking in staccato exclamations. He sat down at his father's desk and wrote what he could not have written the day before to save his life, for he now saw himself as the man in Dayton evidently saw him.

X-Y-Z, Dayton, Ohio:

Sir—I graduated from college last week. I am a twenty-one-year-old man now. I will be Man until I shall be my own Man—and then perhaps yours also. Ego plus Knowledge equals Xnth. Thomas Leigh,

West Twelfth Street,

New York City.

He addressed the envelope, stamped it, and went out to drop it at the corner letter-box. He did not intend to lose time. He realized, as firmly as if he had been writing business aphorisms for a living, that time was money. And he needed both.

As soon as the letter was in the box he felt that his life's work had begun. This lifted a great weight from his chest. He now could breathe deeply. He did so. The oxygen filled his lungs. That brought back composure—he was doing all he could. The consciousness of this gave him courage.

Courage has an inveterate habit of growing. By feeding on itself it waxes greater, and thus its food-supply is never endangered. By the time Tommy Leigh returned to his house, once the abode of fear, he was so brave that he could think calmly. Thinking calmly is always conducive to thinking forgivingly, and forgiveness strengthens love.

“Poor old dad!” he said, and thought of how his father had loved his mother and what he had done for his only son. He would stick to his father through thick and thin.

That much settled, Tommy thought of himself. That made him think of the luncheon at Sherry's with Rivington Willetts. Marion Willetts would be there. For a moment he thought he must beg off. It was like going to a cabaret in deep mourning. But he reasoned that since he was going to Dayton, this would be his social swansong, the leave-taking of his old life, his final farewell to boyhood and Dame Pleasure.

He was glad he had told his father he would not accept any more money. He counted his cash. He had eleven dollars and seventy cents. He was glad he had so little. It cheered him so that he was able to dress with great care; but before he did so he answered some of the other advertisements.

At the luncheon he was a pleasant-faced chap, well set-up, with an air of youth rather than of juvenility, as though he were a young business man. If he had not come naturally by it this impression of business manhood might have degenerated into one of those unfortunate assumptions of superiority that so irritate in the young because the old know that age is nothing to be proud of, age with its implied wisdom being the most exasperating of all fallacies.

With Tommy the impression of grown manhood imparted to his chatter a quality of good fellowship deliberately put on out of admirable sympathy for young people who very properly did not desire to be bored. A nice chap, who could be trusted to be a stanch friend in comedy or tragedy! The girls even thought he was interesting!

He heard his chum Willetts gaily discuss plans for the summer, all of which necessitated Mr. Thomas Leigh's presence at certain friendly houses. But he said nothing until after the luncheon was over and the talk had begun to drag desultorily, as it does when guests feel “good-by” before they say it.

“Well,” said Tommy, smiling pleasantly after the pause that followed Marion's beginning to button a glove, “you might as well hear it now as later. It will save postage. I am not going to see you after to-day!”

“What!” cried Rivington.

“That!” said Tommy. “My father told me this morning that there was nothing doing for me in finance.”

“Oh, they always tell you business is rotten,” said Rivington, reassuringly. His own father, with hundreds of tenanted houses, always talked that way.

“Yes, but this time it's so.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Marion, in distress, “did you talk back to—”

“My child, no harsh words passed my lips nor his. I received honey with quinine from old Doctor Fate. The father of your dear friend is down to cases. The stuff simply isn't there; so it's me for commerce and industry.”

“What the heavens are you shooting at, Tommy?”

“In plain English, it means that I've got to go to work, earn my own cigarette money, cut my fastidious appetite in two, and hustle like a squirrel in a peanut warehouse. I'm going to Dayton, Ohio.”

“Oh, Tommy!” said Marion. She had ceased to fumble with her gloves, and was looking at young Mr. Leigh with deep sympathy and a subtle admiration.

Tommy was made aware of both by the relatively simple expedient of looking into her eyes. The conviction came upon him like a tidal wave that this was the finest girl in the world. He shared his great trouble with her, and that made her his as it had made him hers.

She was overpoweringly beautiful!

Then came the reaction. It could never be! Calmly stated, she knew that he was going to do a man's work. But she did not know why, nor why he must leave New York. He turned on her a pair of startled, fear-filled eyes.

She became serious as by magic. “What is it?” she whispered.

The low tones brought her very close to him. Tommy wished to have no secrets from her, but he could not tell her. She read his unwillingness with the amazing intuition of women. Their relations subtly changed with that exchange of glances.

“I—I can't tell you—all the—the reasons,” he stammered, feeling himself helpless against the drive of something within him that insisted on talking. “I can't!” He paused, and then he whispered, pleadingly, “And you mustn't ask me!”

If she insisted he would confess, and he mustn't.

“I wish I had the nerve,” broke in Rivington, his voice dripping admiration and regret. “Tommy, you are some person, believe me!”

Tommy had forgotten that Rivington was present. He turned to his friend now. In his eyes, as in the eyes of the girl, Tommy saw hero-worship. This unanimity made Tommy feel very like his own portrait painted by the friendship of Rivington Willetts, Esquire.

“Oh, pshaw!” he said, modestly. “I've got to do it. I wouldn't if I didn't have to.”

“Yes, you would,” contradicted Marion, positively.

He in turn was too polite to contradict her. But a moment later, when they shook hands at parting, he made his trusty right convey in detail his acknowledgment that she knew everything. He was absolutely certain she would understand the speech he had not expressed in the words he had so carefully selected to speak silently with.

Rivington made him promise to dine at the College Club that evening. A lot of the fellows would surely be there. Tommy went—the more willingly because he could not bear to talk to his father about the one subject that seemed inevitable between them. And, moreover, while he did not intend to talk about it with his comrades, he had always discussed everything else with them for four years. Their presence would help to make his own silence tolerable to himself.

The most curious thing in the world happened. Instead of expressing sympathy for Mr. Thomas Leigh's financial reverses, all of the boys offered him nothing but congratulations on his pluck, his resolve, and his profound philosophy. He felt himself elected by acclamation to a position as the oldest and wisest of the greatest class in history, the first of them all to become a man.

The majority of his intimates were sons of millionaires, with not a snob among them, the splendid democracy of their college having decreed that snobbery was the unpardonable crime.

But it was plain that none of them ever had expected labor to fall to his lot. Now they felt certain of his success. They gravely discussed methods for winning fame and fortune, and were not only profound, but even cynical at times. They had quite a store of maxims which they called the right dope. When they asked him what he was going to do he smiled mysteriously and shook his head. He did this purely in self-defense. But they said he was a deep one.

He left them, immensely comforted. It was only when he was in his room an hour later, trying to go to sleep, that the grim reality of his tragedy came to him. What, he asked himself bitterly, could he do? He was almost helpless in the grasp of the terrible monster called the world. His hands were tied—almost in handcuffs.

The thought made him close his teeth tightly. He would do it somehow. Fate had tom from his bleeding heart the right to have friends. He would regain the right. He fell asleep while in this fighting mood.

When Tommy walked into the dining-room the next morning to have breakfast with his father, he was surprised to find himself wondering over the particular form of salutation. He desired his father to know what his plans were and what caused them. And also his loyalty must be made plain. Therefore, he said with a cheerfulness, he could not help exaggerating:

“Good morning, dad!”

Mr. Leigh looked up quickly, almost apprehensively, at his only son. Then he looked away and said, very quietly, “Good morning, my son.” There was an awkward pause. Mr. Leigh could not see the smile of loyalty that Tommy had forced his lips to show for his father's special benefit. So Tommy decided that he must encourage Mr. Leigh verbally. He said, with a brisk sort of earnestness:

“Well, I answered several ads in the Herald. This is the one I particularly like.”

He took from his pocket the Dayton call and gave it to Mr. Leigh.

Mr. Leigh took it with so pitiful an eagerness that Tommy felt very sorry for him. When he finished reading Mr. Leigh frowned. Tommy wondered why.

Presently the old man asked, almost diffidently, “Do you think you—you can meet the expected requirements?”

Tommy's entire life-to-be passed pageant-like before his mind's eye in a twinkling. The banners were proudly borne by Tommy's emotions; and Tommy's resolve to do what he must was the drum-major.

“Sure thing!” answered' Tommy. He felt the false note in his reply even before he saw the change that came over his father's face. “Yes, sir,” pursued Mr. Thomas Leigh, in a distinctly middle-aged voice. “I don't know what he wants, but I know what I want. And if I want to be a man and he wants me to be one, I can't see what's to hinder either of us. My boy days are over, and I have got to pay back—I'm going to do what I can to show I appreciate your”—here Tommy gulped—“the sacrifices you've made for me. And—oh, father!” Tommy ceased to speak. He couldn't help it.

Mr. Leigh's face took on the grim look Tommy could never forget, and his voice was harsh.

“I have made no sacrifice for you. What your mother wished you to have I have seen to it that you had. You owe me no thanks.”

There was a long pause. Tommy didn't break it, because he did not know what to say. And the reason was that he couldn't say all the things he wished to say. But presently the old man said, gently:

“My son, I—I should like to shake hands with you.”

Tommy would have been happier if he could have thrown his arms about his mother's neck and told her his craving to comfort himself by being comforted. But he rose quickly, grasped his father's hand, and shook it vehemently. He kept on shaking it, gripping it very tightly the while and gulping as he shook, until Mr. Leigh said:

“I'll be going now, Thomas. I must be at the bank before the—”

Tommy dropped his father's hand very suddenly.