Читать книгу Making Money - Owen Johnson - Страница 9

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When he returned with Granning into the court and upstairs to their quarters a telegram greeted him from the floor as he opened the door. It was from his father, brief and businesslike.

Arrive to-morrow. Wish to see you at three at office. Important.

J. B. Crocker.

He stood by the fireplace tearing it slowly to pieces, feeling the approach of reality in his existence, a little frightened at its imminence.

"Not bad news," said Granning, settling his great bulk on the couch and reaching for a pipe from the rack. But at this instant a smiling Japanese valet ushered in the trunks.

"This is Sweeney," said Granning with an introductory wave. "He's one of four. We gave up trying to remember their names, so Fred rechristened them. The others are Patsy, O'Rourke, and Houlahan. Sweeney speaks perfect English, if you ask him for a telephone book he'll rush out and bring you a taxicab. Understand, eh, Sweeney?"

"Velly well, yes, sir," said Sweeney, smiling a pleased smile.

"How the deuce do you work it then?" said Bojo, prying open his trunk.

"Oh, it's quite simple. Fred discovered the combination. All you have to remember is that no matter what you ask for Sweeney always gets a taxi, Patsy brings in the breakfast, Houlahan starts for the tailor, and O'Rourke produces the scrubwoman. Just remember that and you'll have no trouble. But for the Lord's sake don't get em mixed up." He broke off. "What's the matter? You look serious."

"I'm wondering how I'll feel this time to-morrow," said Bojo with his arms full of shirts and neckties. "I've got a pleasant little interview with the Governor ahead." He filled a drawer of the bureau and returned into the sitting-room, and as Granning, with his usual discretion, ventured no question he added, looking out at the court where three blazing windows of the restaurant were flinging pools of light across the dark green plots: "He'll want me to chuck all this,—shoot up to a hole in the mud; bury myself in a mill town for four or five years. Pleasant prospect."

It did seem a bleak prospect, indeed, standing there in the commodious bay window, seeing the flooded sky, hearing all the distant mingled songs of the city. From the near-by wall the orchestra of the theater sent the gay beats of a musical comedy march feebly out through open windows, while from the adjoining wall of the Times Annex, beyond the brilliant busy windows, the linotype machines were clicking out the news of the world that came throbbing in. The theater, the press, that world of imagination and hourly sensation, the half-opened restaurant with glimpses of gay tables and the beginnings of the nightly cabaret, the blazing court itself filled with ardent young men at the happy period of the first great ventures, all were brought so close to his own eager curiosity that he turned back rebelliously:

"By heavens, I won't do it, whatever happens! I won't be starved out for the sake of more dollars. Well, would you in my place—now?"

He took a pair of shoes and flung them scudding across the floor into the room and then stood looking down at the noncommittal figure of his friend.

"Granning, you don't approve of us, do you? Stop looking like a sphinx. Answer or I'll dump the tray over you. You don't approve, do you? Besides, I watched your face to-night when Fred was spouting all that ridiculous stuff."

"He meant it."

"Do you think so?" He sat down thoughtfully. "I wonder."

"What worried you?" said Granning directly, with a sharp look.

"I was sort of upset," Bojo admitted. "You know when you got through and Fred got through, I thought after all you were right—we are gamblers. We want things quick and easily. It's the excitement, the living on a high tension."

"I always sort of figured out you'd want to do something different," said Granning slowly.

"So I would," he said moodily. "I wish I had Roscy's brains. I wonder what I could do if I had to shift for myself."

"So that's the idea, is it?"

He nodded.

"The old Dad's stubborn as blazes. Had an up-and-down row with Jack, my older brother, and turned him out. Lord knows what's become of him. Dad's got as much love for the Wall Street game as your pesky old self. Thinks they're a lot of loafers and confidence men."

"I didn't say it," said Granning with a short laugh.

"No, but you think it."

Granning rose as the clock struck ten and shouldered off to his bedroom according to his invariable custom. When Bojo finally turned in it was to sleep by fits and starts. The weight of the decision which he would have to make on the morrow oppressed him. It was all very well to announce that he would start at the bottom rather than yield, but the world had opened up to him in a different light since the dinner of confidences. He saw the two ways clearly—the long, slow plodding way of Granning, and the other way, the world of opportunities through friends, the world of quick results to those privileged to be behind the scenes. If the end were the same, why take the way of toil and deprivation? Besides, there were other reasons, sentimental reasons, that urged him to the easier choice. If he could only make his father see things rationally—but he had slight hope of making an impression upon that direct and adamant will.

"Well, if everything goes smash, I'll make Roscy give me a job on the paper," he thought as he turned restlessly in his bed.

The white gleam of a shifting electric sign, high above the roofs, played over the opposite wall. At midnight he heard dimly two sounds which were destined from now on to dispute the turning of the night with their contending notes of work and pleasure—the sound of great presses beginning to rumble under the morning edition and from the restaurant an inconscient chorus welcoming the midnight with jingling rhythm.

You want to cry,

You want to die,

But all you do is laugh, Hi! Hi!

You've got the High Jinks! That's why!

When he awoke the next morning it was to the sound of Roscoe Marsh in the adjoining sitting-room telephoning for breakfast. The sun was pouring over his coverlet and the clock stood reproachfully at nine o clock. He slipped into a dressing-gown and found Marsh yawning over the papers. Granning had departed at seven o'clock to the works on the Jersey shore. DeLancy presently staggered out, tousled and sleepy, resplendent in a blazing red satin dressing-gown, announcing:

"Lord, but this brokerage business is exacting work."

"Late party, eh?" said Bojo, laughing.

"Where the devil is the coffee?" said DeLancy for all answer.

Marsh, too, had been of the party after the night work had been completed, though he showed scarcely a trace of the double strain. Breakfast over, Bojo finished unpacking, killing time until noon arrived, when, after a solicitous selection of shirts and neckties, he went off by appointment to meet Miss Doris Drake.

To-day the thoughts of that other interview with his father were too present in his imagination to permit of the usual zest such a meeting usually drew forth. The attachment, for despite the insinuations of DeLancy and Marsh it was hardly more than that, had been of long standing. There had been a period toward the end of boarding-school when he had been tremendously in love and had corresponded with extraordinary faithfulness and treasured numerous tokens of feminine reciprocation with a sentimental devotion. The infatuation had cooled, but the devotion had remained as a necessary romantic outlet. She had been his guest as a matter of course at all the numerous gala occasions of college life, at the football match, the New London race, and the Prom. He was tremendously proud to have her on his arm, so proud that at times he temporarily felt a return of that bitter-sweet frenzy when at school he turned hot and cold with the expectancy of her letters. At the bottom he was perhaps playing at love, a little afraid of her with that spirit of cautious deliberation which, had he but known it, abides not with romance.

During the month on the ranch he had spent in their house-party, he had a hundred times tried to convince himself that the old ardor was there, and when somehow in his own honesty he failed, he would often wonder what was the subtle reason that prevented it. She was everything that the eye could imagine, brilliant, perhaps a little too much so for a young lady of twenty, and sought after by a score of men to whom she remained completely indifferent. He was flattered and yet he remained uneasy, forced to admit to himself that there was something lacking in her to stir his pulses as they had once been stirred. When DeLancy had so frankly announced his intention of making a favorable marriage, something had uneasily stirred his conscience. Was there after all some such unconscious instinct in him at the bottom of this continued intimacy?

When he reached the metropolitan castle of the Drakes on upper Fifth Avenue, he found the salons still covered up in summer trappings, long yellow linens over the furniture, the paintings on the walls still wrapped in cheesecloth. As he was twirling his cane aimlessly before the fireplace, wondering how long it would please Miss Doris to keep him waiting, there came a breathless scamper and rush, accompanied by delighted giggles, and the next moment an Irish terrier, growling and snarling in mock fury, slid over the polished floor, pursued by a young girl who had a firm grip on the stubby tail. The chase ended in the center of the room with a sudden tumble. The dog, liberated, stood quivering with delight at a safe distance, head on one side, tongue out, ready for the next move of his tormenter who was camped in the middle of the floor. But at this moment she perceived Bojo.

"Oh, hello," she said with a start of surprise but no confusion. "Who are you?"

"I'm Crocker, Tom Crocker," he said, laughing back at the flushed oval face, with mischievous eyes dancing somewhere in the golden hair that tumbled in shocks to her shoulder.

She sprang up brightly, advancing with outstretched hand.

"Oh, you're Bojo," she said in correction. "You don't know me. I'm Patsie, the terror of the family. Now don't say you thought I was a child, I'm seventeen—going on eighteen in January."

He shook the hand that was thrust out to him in a direct boyish grip, surprised and a little bewildered at the irresistible youth and spirits of the young lady who stood so naturally before him in short skirt and in simple shirtwaist open at the tanned neck.

"Of course they've told you I'm a terror," she said defiantly. He nodded, which seemed to please her, for she rattled on: "Well, I am. They had to keep me away until Dolly hooked the Duke. Have you seen him? Well, if that's a duke all I've got to say is I think he's a mutt. Of course you're waiting for Doris, aren't you?"

The assumption of his vassalage somehow stirred a little antagonism, but before he could answer she was off again.

"Well, a jolly long wait you'll have, too. Doris is splashing around among the rouge and powder like Romp in a puddle."

Her own cheeks needed no such encouragement, he thought, laughing back at her through the pure infection of her high spirits.

"I like you; you're all right," she said, surveying him with her head on one side like Romp, the terrier, who came sniffing up to him in the friendliest way. "You're not like a lot of these fashion plates that come in on tiptoes. Say, that was a bully tackle you made in that Harvard game."