Читать книгу The Brute - Kummer Frederic Arnold - Страница 2

When Donald Rogers left his apartment in One Hundred and Tenth Street the next morning, he had an unaccountable feeling that something out of the ordinary, something of a nature unforeseen and menacing, would occur to him before the day was over. Being of a somewhat matter-of-fact turn of mind, however, he laughed at his fears, and attributed them to a slight attack of the great American disease, brought on by over-much smoking. Perhaps, had he been a Frenchman, and a magpie or a hare had suddenly crossed his path, he might have been tempted to take off his hat to the one, or to bow politely to the other; as it was, he put forebodings out of his mind, as unworthy a practical man of affairs. The uncomfortable feeling persisted, however, in spite of his optimistic efforts to escape from it in the depths of his morning paper, all during the long ride down-town in the subway, and was forgotten only in the complexities of his morning’s mail.

The unfortunate discussion with his wife, Edith, the night before, which was the real cause of his depression, he had religiously put out of his mind, attributing her discontent to some purely temporary irritability which would soon be forgotten.

They had neither of them referred to the matter at breakfast; Donald had been in his usual hurry, Edith occupied with Bobbie, who had a habit of awakening somewhat querulous and difficult to please. Her manner had been serene, if a trifle distant and reserved. Donald felt that already the storm had passed, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

He spent the forenoon busily occupied in his office. It was not much of an office, as such things go in New York, being merely a small private room with a larger and lighter one adjoining it, but it sufficed for all the needs of his business, which was that of a consulting mechanical engineer.

The inner room, which was the smaller of the two, served to receive his clients, of which there were not many; the outer contained the draughting tables and his assistant. Yet, small and plain as these rooms were, they reflected to a surprising extent the character of the man. There were no attempts at decoration; no concessions to any sense of the artistic; everything was plain, solid, durable, honest, like the man himself. Only the photographs of Edith, his wife, and Bobbie, his little boy, in a silver frame upon the flat-topped oak desk, bespoke the sentiment which was so deep and vital a part of Donald Rogers’ nature.

Existence had not dealt over kindly with this descendant of the dour land of Wallace and Bruce, but he met it with high courage, and head up, as befitted one of his race. Born in a small town along the upper reaches of the Hudson, he had known the love of a father only long enough to clutch his fingers in the first futile efforts to face the world upon two feet, instead of on all fours; the mother, however, had survived longer, and it was to her that Donald owed the sturdy lessons in the eternal rightness of things that underlay and governed all his actions.

He was sixteen when she was laid beside her long-expectant husband, and Donald, her only child, went out into the world with a very small patrimony and a very great grief. Yet this sweet-faced woman, locked in her long leaden sleep, was not dead; her faith, her courage, her high ideals, lived and breathed in her son, and no act of his life but showed in some way, however slight, their purifying effect.

Donald Rogers’ father had been a steam engineer without a college education; his son determined to follow in his footsteps with one, and, with this purpose strong within him, gathered together the small store of worldly goods with which the fates had endowed him and went to New York and the engineering course at Columbia. It took him five years to complete the course, partly because his early education had been somewhat incomplete, partly owing to the necessity under which he labored, of earning sufficient money, as he went along, to piece out the fragments of his small inheritance and maintain himself. This he did by doing draughting work at night; it was hard on the eyes, but the experience helped him in his profession. At twenty-two he was graduated with honors; these, with his diploma, constituted his stock in trade; his weapons with which to win fame and fortune.

Five years of employment in subordinate positions had not only given him practical experience, but had taught him the futility of expecting the aforementioned fame and fortune while working on a salary; his courage, his savings and some staunch business friends all favored the idea of launching out for himself. The results had been encouraging; he now, after eight years, had a substantial, if small, practice, and an unshaken belief in himself and his future.

It was about the time he first opened his office as consulting engineer that he had met Edith Pope, and they were married within a year. She was a girl of unusual beauty, and through both inheritance and training quite his opposite. Perhaps it was because of this that she had attracted him.

Her father had been a real-estate dealer, and through his ability and industry had made during his somewhat short business career a large income. His wife, on the other hand, had shown such ability and industry in spending it that, when he died, which he did about the time that Edith was just entering her ’teens, he left only enough to provide a meager living for herself, her mother and her sister Alice, two years her junior. Mrs. Pope had never been able to accustom herself to the blow; she lived in a constant atmosphere of past glories and was never tired of recounting to her daughters all the comforts she had enjoyed when her “dear J. B.,” as she mournfully designated her deceased better half, was alive. Never a day passed, but Edith and her sister were warned against the evils and dangers of marrying a man without money; to some extent it might have appeared that Mrs. Pope hoped to regain, through the matrimonial successes of her daughters, those luxuries of existence which she fondly believed were, to her, absolute necessities.

Whether or not her children paid any serious attention to her advice it would be difficult to say; perhaps the best answer to the question lay in the fact that, when Edith met Donald in the boarding-house on Tenth Street, which was for the time being their mutual home, she straightway fell head over heels in love with him, and married him before the year was out, in spite of her mother’s strenuous objections. That was eight years ago, and, if Edith Rogers was not entirely reconciled to living in a Harlem flat and doing her own housework, she at least found a large measure of compensation in her little boy, Bobbie, who was now six, and a darling, as even his grandmother was forced grudgingly to admit. Her assent was grudging because Mrs. Pope had never forgiven her son-in-law for depriving her of her daughter; one matrimonial asset thus rudely snatched away forced her to concentrate all her hopes upon Alice, and that young lady, at the age of rising twenty-six, had begun to show signs of extreme restiveness, possibly due to an inward conviction that even a Harlem flat and a four-by-six kitchenette possesses some advantages not to be found in boarding-houses of the less-expensive variety, and that a real live man with a living income is better than an old maid’s dreams of a possible, but hitherto undisclosed, millionaire. Emerson Hall, a friend of Donald’s, whom she had met a few months before, assisted her greatly in arriving at these not unusual conclusions.

It was long after one o’clock when Donald Rogers, absorbed in a problem of power transmission, bethought himself of luncheon. One was his usual hour; he dropped his calculations, seized his hat, and in a moment was threading his way through the never ending throngs of lower Broadway, on his way to a little chop house in John Street, long famous for its English mutton chops and cream ale.

As he came abreast of the Singer Building, he felt someone grasp his arm from behind and heard a cheery voice, with a familiar ring about it, calling to him. He turned and looked into the handsome, smiling face of a tall bronzed man, whose costume indicated clearly that he hailed from the West.

“Billy West!” he exclaimed, gripping the new-comer’s hand joyfully. “Where on earth did you drop from? I thought you were in Colorado.”

“I was, until four days ago. Thought I’d come East for awhile and look the old town over. How’s everything?” His glance was full of smiling inquiry. “Making lots of money?”

“Not so much that I have to sit up nights thinking how to spend it,” replied Rogers, a trifle bitterly. “Had your lunch?”

“No. Didn’t want to eat alone. I’ve been away so long I hardly know a soul in this blessed burg.”

Rogers took his arm. “Come along with me,” he said. “I’m just on my way.”

West nodded. “Got to see my lawyers some time to-day, but later will do just as well.” In five minutes they were seated in the chop house, ordering luncheon.

“How are you getting along out there among the miners?” laughed Donald, as he dismissed the waiter with their order. “Hope you like it better than doing laboratory work down in Jersey. Ought to be wonderful opportunities for a man, out there.” He paused for a moment, thoughtful. “You know I always used to say, when we were in college, that I meant to go West some day. I’ve never got there, though. New York has become a habit, I’m afraid. Can’t seem to break away from it.”

West looked at his friend with a faintly quizzical smile, and hesitated for a moment, as though he almost feared to tell the other what had come into his mind. Then he leaned across the table, and his face suddenly became grave. “Don,” he said earnestly, “the luck I’ve had out there has been so wonderful, so almost unbelievable, that, even though it happened nearly two years ago, I still can hardly realize that it’s true.”

“Strike a gold mine?” inquired Rogers, with a laugh.

“That’s exactly what I did do, and believe me, Don, it’s some mine. We capitalized it last year at a million, of which yours truly, owns half, and it paid over five per cent. from the start. I haven’t got used to figuring up my income yet, but just at present I think it’s running pretty close to thirty thousand a year, and more coming.” He leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “I’m vice-president of the concern. The Lone Star mine, it’s called, up on the Little Ash river; but I haven’t anything much to do with the management – leave all that to the Boston crowd that put in the money. They’re a fine, conservative lot of fellows, with plenty of experience, and I know my interests are perfectly safe in their hands. So you see, I’m a sort of a gentleman of leisure just at present, with plenty of money to spend, and nobody in particular to spend it on, so I thought I’d take a run down to little old New York and put in a year or so getting acquainted with some of my old friends. I was on my way to my lawyers, as I said, when I met you, and, after attending to a little matter of business, I was coming right up to your office to see you. I looked up your address in the telephone book.”

Donald, who by this time had succeeded in digesting this remarkable piece of news, reached across the table and took his friend’s hand. “Billy,” he said, with a look which left no doubt as to the sincerity of his feelings, “congratulations from the bottom of my heart.”

“Thanks, old man. I knew you would be glad to know about my good luck.” He attacked the chop, which the waiter set before him with a flourish. “And now tell me about yourself. How’s your wife, and the boy – it was a boy, wasn’t it? The happy event occurred just before I went West, and I’m not exactly sure.” He flashed on Rogers one of those brilliant smiles which had always made him loved by both sexes, and particularly the one in petticoats.

“Edith is very well, and the boy is fine. I don’t wonder you did not remember. They will be delighted to see you. Why not come up to dinner to-night. We can’t offer you a feast, but you won’t mind taking pot luck.”

“Well, I should say not. I was hoping you would ask me. You can’t imagine how lost I feel in this town. I suppose it would be different if I had any family, but you know I haven’t even a second cousin I can call my own. I’ve often thought of you and Edith. You know that she might have been Mrs. West, once, years ago, if you hadn’t stepped in and taken her away from me. I’d have been jealous of anyone but you, Don, but I guess the best man won.” He laughed with a hearty frankness, and took up his mug of ale. “Here’s to the youngster. May he live long and prosper.”

Donald drained his glass. “I suppose you will be busy for a couple of hours,” he said, “with your legal matters. Why not come up to my office when you get through – I’m in the Columbia Building, you know – and we’ll go up-town together?”

“I’ll do it. We can stop at my hotel on the way, and give me a chance to clean up a bit. I only got in this morning on the sleeper, you know, and I feel a bit grubby.”

Some half-hour later they were making their way slowly toward Broadway. “What a great town it is, after all!” remarked West, as they turned the corner at John Street. “Every time a fellow goes away for a few years they seem to build it all over again before he gets back.” He turned to look at the towering mass of the Singer Building. “That’s a new one on me. Wouldn’t it make some of my friends back in Colorado have cricks in their backs?”

“It is a wonderful city,” replied Rogers grimly. “I don’t think I should ever care about living anywhere else, but the man who wins out in it has got to deliver the goods. Big as it is, there is no room in it for failures.” He waved his hand to West as the latter turned into Wall Street. “See you around four-thirty. So long.”

“I’ll be there. Wait for me if I’m a little late,” was the reply, as the two separated.

Donald went back to his plain little office and his power-transmission problem with a curious feeling of futility. Thirteen years of hard work had given him but little more than the right to fight that never ceasing battle with the grim city which could excuse anything but failure. West – pleasure-loving Billy West – who from his freshman days had looked upon the world as little more than an amazing joke, had by one stroke of fortune suddenly found all the pleasures, all the luxuries that life contained, at his feet. He did not envy West this good fortune, he was too staunch a friend for that, but he thought of Edith, and their little up-town flat, and as her tired face rose before him he suffered the pangs of that greatest of all forms of poverty, the inability to do for those we love.