Читать книгу The Lever - William Dana Orcutt - Страница 5

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If punctuality is a virtue presaging business success, Allen gave evidence, the following afternoon, of a brilliant future. Previously, he had made no criticism of the condition in which his motor-car was delivered to him at the garage, but this time the men found him strangely unreasonable. The brasses had to be repolished, the hood opened up, and the dust wiped from the long-neglected creases, and every detail was inspected with a carefulness which created comment.

"Goin' to sell his car," one of the men remarked, sententiously, to which sage comment his companion nodded acquiescence.

In spite of the delay thus caused, Allen shut off his power in front of the hotel entrance at exactly the appointed hour. He bounded into the lobby, and a few moments later was ushered into the elevator and guided to the Gorhams' apartment.

"Why, it's Riley!" the caller exclaimed, enthusiastically, as the door was opened for him by Mr. Gorham's aged retainer—"it's the same Riley who used to box my ears when I tramped over his flower-beds in Pittsburgh."

The old man regarded the visitor attentively. "Shure it's Misther Allen Sanford, grown out iv his short pants into a fine young man, so he has." A broad grin replaced the questioning expression on his face. "I did box ye'er ears good, didn't I, sor? but go along wid yer, th' trouble ye made me, ye an' Miss Alice a-traipsin' over me flower-beds." Then, with a sigh: "Ah, sor, I remimber it as if 'twas yisterday. Miss Alice's mother was livin' thin, God rist her soul. Thank ye, sor, f'r remimberin' me. I'll call Mrs. Gorham an' Miss Alice."

It was the girl who appeared first, greeting Allen with frank cordiality.

"Eleanor will be ready in a moment," she said. "Isn't this the greatest coincidence?" she continued. "Yesterday at this time I had no idea you were within a thousand miles, and now it seems as if we might almost be back in Pittsburgh again, living the same childish life and playing the same games."

"It was certainly a dandy coincidence for me," Allen agreed, "but I don't quite follow you back to the kid games we played."

"Why, Allen!" Alice reproached him, "have you forgotten the motor rides you and I took with wash-tubs, turned upside down, for seats, and the remnant of your express-wagon for a steering-wheel? My! how fast we used to go!"

"That's so!" he admitted. "I'd forgotten all about it. You used to look great sitting on that tub."

"Freckles and all?"

"I didn't remember the freckles, either, until you spoke of them. You were a little corker, even then."

"Even then?" Alice repeated, without intending to.

"No one has told you that you've gone backward in looks, has he?" Allen laughed, looking straight into her face. Then he continued: "There's one other game we played, which I haven't forgotten: Do you remember how we used to keep house together? You were Mrs. Allen Sanford then, and we had everything fixed up—"

Alice sobered. "I—I think I have forgotten that one," she said. "Isn't it ridiculous what games children do play?"

"But the motor-car game has come true," he insisted, "and you'll look just as good to me sitting in the real car, as you used to on top of that tub. And as for the other—"

"How long Eleanor is taking!" she interrupted; "I'll run and find her."

With which she disappeared, returning almost immediately, accompanied by

Mrs. Gorham.

"I shan't be asked again, if I keep you waiting so long, shall I?"

Eleanor apologized.

"The appointed time always arrives at the same moment that Mrs. Gorham does," Allen replied.

"So!" Eleanor was frankly surprised by the boy's gallantry. "If this is a sample, I must agree with your father that diplomacy is your natural field. It would be a pity to waste that in a business office."

"Don't you join the opposition, Mrs. Gorham," he said, seriously. "I'm going to have a hard enough time with the pater as it is. Now, if you're ready, shall we start? It isn't going to be the most sociable arrangement in the world, with me driving the car, but we'll go slowly, which will give us a chance to visit."

With Fort Meyer as the objective point, Allen took the road through Rock Creek Park to Chevy Chase, feeling attracted, perhaps unconsciously, because it was there he had renewed this acquaintance which promised to end the ennui he had experienced during the weeks he had spent in Washington. Slowing his speed down to a point requiring the least attention, he was able to converse with his guests. Alice had said little since they left the hotel, but at last she found an opportunity to free her mind.

"Eleanor wasn't serious in what she said about your going into diplomacy, Allen. Any ability a man has in that line is just as valuable in business."

Mrs. Gorham laughed as she turned to Alice. "Has that been troubling you, my dear?" Then to Allen: "You touched on a very live wire when you said what you did yesterday, Mr. Sanford. Alice thinks that a man who chooses anything but a business career is blind to what life offers him."

"You do too, don't you, Allen?" the girl asked.

"Why—yes," he answered. "I haven't exactly analyzed it, but I know I'd rather go into business than into the diplomatic service."

"But you must have some reason for it," she urged.

"I have—I don't want to spend my life in other countries. Little old New York is good enough for me. I have lots of friends there, and that's where I'd like to settle down."

"New York is a hard place for a young man to start his career," said Mrs. Gorham. "You will find there an absolute intolerance for the man in the making. New York demands the finished product."

"But you don't have to start in New York," Alice added. "You could make your success in some other city, and then come to New York if you wanted to."

Allen became unusually thoughtful as the conversation progressed.

"Gee!" he said; "I knew that I wanted to go into business, but I didn't realize how much there was to think over before doing it."

"But it's worth all the time and thought you can give to it," the girl said, enthusiastically. "I can't imagine anything grander than to stand at the threshold of the world ready to enter the battle of life, to struggle with the obstacles and to conquer them. Think, Allen—just think of what you have before you, while we girls never get any such chance at all."

"Yes." Allen hesitated, carried off his feet by the intensity of the words and the rapt expression of her face. "Yes, I guess it is grand, though it never struck me just that way before. I say!—" he continued, after a moment's pause, "you're an enthusiast on this business question, aren't you?"

"Could she be Robert Gorham's daughter and not be an enthusiast?" Mrs.

Gorham asked.

"If father would only let me, I know I could make a success in business," Alice continued. "I watch him, when he least suspects it; I study the papers which he leaves around, and sometimes it seems as if I just must be a boy, and get into the thick of it."

"What a funny idea!" Allen remarked. "I never thought girls cared anything about business."

"But it's no use," she bemoaned. "I've got to be a girl whether I like it or not; but you haven't any such handicap."

"Haven't I?—you forget the pater."

"If you felt as strongly about it as I do, you could persuade him."

"Have you—met the pater?" he asked, significantly.

Alice smiled for a moment, and then became serious again. "If you have determination enough to succeed in business, Allen, the same characteristic will win out with your father."

The boy did not know quite what to answer. Stephen Sanford insisted that the only reason Allen showed a preference for business was because he knew his father had set his heart on a different career for him. It may have been merely an unconscious assertion of his budding manhood which rebelled against having his life-work laid out for him without consultation, just as his governess used to lay out his clothes. At all events, from his very nature, Allen had not considered the matter as seriously as he now saw Alice had done, and he was entirely unequal to the task of holding up his end of the discussion. So, after a few moments' silence, during which she watched him with eager expectancy, he turned his face toward her, and grinned broadly.

"I'm mighty glad you are a girl," he said, irrelevantly; "and I'm mighty glad you can't go into business."

Alice was disappointed on his account, but she chose to reply only to his reference to her.

"Of course," she pouted. "You men are all alike. You're selfish and unsympathetic. You want all the interesting things for yourselves, and—some of you—don't even know why you want them."

"I really believe you're getting personal." Allen laughed. "Don't knock; come right in. Now, to heap coals of fire upon your head, I'll tell you what I'll do, Alice; I'll divide chances with you, beginning with the first."

"Do you mean to say you haven't had even a first chance yet?"

He nodded cheerfully. "Not a single first, to say nothing of doubtful seconds."

"Then it's because you haven't tried," she asserted.

"Of course; but that doesn't mean that some one else hasn't tried. I've been the dutiful son, waiting for 'papa' to show him that the paternal way is the only way; but even the pater hasn't proved a blooming success in that line. The real trouble is that the old man is too conscientious. Just as the President gets all worked up and just crazy to send me as minister plenipotentiary to the Republic of Zuzu, the pater coughs guiltily, and murmurs, 'Oh, yes; he's a good boy, if he is my son, but he hasn't been brought up in my school,' and shows by every movement that he knows he's passing off a gold brick. Then, of course, the whole game is up."

"Why doesn't he take you into his own business?" Mrs. Gorham asked.

"Jealousy or judgment; can't say which."

"Do be serious, Allen," Alice insisted. "I don't believe you have any strong feelings about it anyway. No wonder your father gets out of patience with you if you talk to him about it as you do to us."

"Oh, he gets out of patience, all right," Allen admitted, "but it's simply because he can't refute my arguments. He talks about what he was doing at my age, but I tell him my record is a whole lot better than his. He couldn't afford to go to college, while I could, and at the same proud point in our careers I was successfully touching him for five hundred a month, while he was with great difficulty earning a hundred and fifty, on which he supported a family. But the pater—well, the pater has a way of looking at things which is all his own."

"There is absolutely no use expecting to talk business with you," the girl declared. "Father won't discuss it with me, and you won't be serious at all, and I know Mr. Covington is really laughing at me all the time, even though he tries to make me think that he looks upon me as a very business-like young woman."

"Who is Mr. Covington?" Allen asked, bluntly, inwardly resenting the fact that any one except her father was as intimate with Alice as the words indicated.

"He's father's right-hand man in the Consolidated Companies. If you could once see him and father at work and hear them talk you would understand the fascination of it."

"Then you like business conversation?" The boy found it difficult to comprehend.

"Better than anything else in the world."

Allen became really serious. "If that's the case," he said, emphatically, "I'm going to become a man of affairs, just to give you that pleasure."

Alice clapped her hands with delight. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

He turned so blank a face to the expectant one he saw before him that the seriousness could no longer be preserved. The vacuity turned into a smile, and the smile into a broad grin.

"I guess I lose if I have to answer that question now," he admitted, frankly; "but you keep your eye on Willie and the push-ball, and watch the professor change him into a big roaring captain of industry. Then you shall talk business with him as much as you like, and he won't make you feel that he's laughing at you, as that Mr.—, what's his name, does."

"Good for you, Allen!" the girl cried, really pleased by the clumsily expressed compliment.

"So all is settled now except the pater, and I'm almost launched on my career," Allen replied. "Now suppose we take up your case. What have you been doing all these years?"

"Well," said Alice, smiling, "the history of my life is yet to be written, but the main facts up to the present are that I have safely passed through school and most of my other childhood diseases; that I had my coming-out ball in New York last winter; that I am happy, and—most important of all—that I have Eleanor."

She took Mrs. Gorham's hand affectionately in hers as she spoke, and Allen needed nothing more to demonstrate the strength of the bond which existed between the two. It was not the affection between mother and daughters, or between sisters, or friends, but rather the best of all three merged and purified by the yearning each had felt for that which now each had found.

The conversation during the ride back to the hotel was in lighter vein, in which Allen showed greater proficiency. Alice's interest in him was mingled with a disappointment that the years had not made him older and less irresponsible. She felt herself distinctly his senior, yet she also felt a confidence in his unexpressed ability. To Mrs. Gorham the passages-at-arms between the two children, as she would have called them, were refreshing. She knew that each was being benefited by coming in contact with a different nature. Alice's serious side needed the leaven of a lighter viewpoint on life; Allen's buoyancy was already being tempered by her ambition. This was why, when Alice asked her later, in their apartment, "Don't you think Allen needs a little of that 'inspiration' you spoke of?" she had kissed the girl, and answered without hesitation, "Yes, dear; and you are just the one to give it to him."

"Then this is my chance to enter business by proxy?" Alice asked again; and Mrs. Gorham, smiling quietly to herself, had answered, "Perhaps."