NAN decided to explain to Eaton that Farley’s illness had taken a turn for the worse and that he had been abusing her as a relief from his suffering. She was surprised to find two men in the parlor, the second of whom she did not at once recognize as Jerry.
“I’ve taken the liberty,” Eaton began, “of bringing Mr. Amidon along. Thought you wouldn’t mind, particularly as I couldn’t have come myself without him. He dropped in just as I was leaving and seemed greatly depressed; I hadn’t the heart to leave him. Depression is his normal state—no serenity, no hope, no vision!”
Amidon grinned during this explanation, realizing that its lack of veracity was, in the circumstances, peculiarly Eatonesque and attributable to his friend’s wish to relieve Nan of embarrassment. They had been uncomfortable from the moment the maid admitted them and they became conscious of the discord above. Words and phrases of Farley’s furious arraignment had reached them and there was no escaping the conclusion that she had been the object of the castigation. Jerry, acting on his own impulses, would have grabbed his hat and bolted. It was only the demeanor of his idol, placidly staring at the wall, that held him back. The call had been suggested by Eaton as a gay social adventure, but it was disconcerting to find a girl whose good fortune had seemed so enviable with tears in her eyes, nervously fingering a moist handkerchief, and Jerry’s wits were severely taxed by his efforts to meet a situation without precedent in his experience. Once he had called on a girl whose father came home drunk and manifested an ambition to destroy the furniture and use the pieces in the chastisement of his daughter, and Amidon had enjoyed a brief, decisive engagement with the inebriated parent and had then put him to bed. But there was nothing in that incident that bore in the slightest degree upon the difficulties of people who lived in the best street in town, where, he had always assumed, the prosperous householders dwelt in peace and harmony with their fortunate families.
“I’m glad to see you, both of you,” she said, with all the assurance she could muster. “Papa’s been having a bad time; you must have heard him talking. He’s very angry. I wish you’d go up, Mr. Eaton, and see if you can’t talk him into a better humor.”
“If you think it’s all right—” Eaton began dubiously; but he was amused at Nan’s cheerful willingness to turn her angry foster-parent over to him for pacification. It was like Nan!
“Oh, he’d been looking forward to seeing you,” she answered quite honestly. “These spells don’t last long; the very sight of you will cheer him.”
She did not, however, offer to accompany him to Farley’s room, but discreetly left him to test the atmosphere for himself.
“Well,” Jerry remarked, when he was alone with Nan, “Pittsburg put it over on New York to-day. Three to nothing!”
He gave the score with a jubilant turn to the “nothing,” as though Pittsburg’s success called for universal rejoicing.
Nan, intent upon catching some hint of the nature of Eaton’s reception, merely murmured her mild pleasure in this news. She was satisfied, from the calm that reigned above, that Eaton had begun well, and that under the spell of his presence Farley would soon be restored to tranquillity.
“Sorry Mr. Farley is having a bad time,” Jerry went on, thinking the invalid’s outbreak required at least a passing reference. “You know down at the store the boys still talk about him. Somebody’s always telling how he used to do things, and the funny things he used to say. When I first struck the plant, he used to scare me to death, sticking his nose in the shipping-room without notice and catching the boys larking. Once I had gone to the mat with a plumber that was looking for a gas-leak, and the boss came in and got us both by the collar and threw us down the stairs like a pair of old shoes. I thought I was a goner for sure when he sent for me to come to the office that night and asked me who started the trouble. I told him the plumber said whenever he found gas-leaks in jobbing houses he always reckoned somebody was getting ready to collect the insurance. Uncle Tim—that’s what the boys call him—asked me if I’d hit him hard, and I told him I guess he’d have considerable business with the dentist, all right. Just for that he raised my wages a dollar a week! Say, can you beat it!”
He snapped his fingers and shook his head impatiently.
“Isn’t that rank—just after Cecil lectured me all the way up here about cutting out slang! I promised him solemnly before we started that I wouldn’t say say; and here I’ve already done it! How do you learn to talk like white folks, anyhow? I suppose you got to be born to it; it must be like swimming or rowing a boat, that you learn once and always catch the stroke right.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Nan consolingly. “I use a good deal of slang myself; and at school my English teacher said it wasn’t such a sin if we used it as though we were quoting—we girls held up two fingers—so!”
“That sounds reasonable, all right; I must tell my noble knight about that. It seems sometimes as though I just couldn’t get a ball over the plate—there I go again! And Cecil warned me specially against talking like a bleacher hoodlum when we got here.”
“Oh, that’s not worth bothering about. I’m so glad to see you that I could cry for joy. If you hadn’t come when you did, I don’t know what might have happened.”
He had been trying to direct the talk into other channels, and her remark puzzled him. That this wholly charming, delightful Nan could have given her benefactor cause for the objurgations he had heard poured out upon her was unbelievable. Still, it was rather pleasant than otherwise to find that she was human, capable of tears, and it was not less than flattering that she should invite his sympathy.
“Well,” he began cautiously, “I guess we all have our troubles. Life ain’t such an easy game. You think you’re sailing along all right, and suddenly something goes wrong and you’ve got to climb out and study astronomy through the bottom of the machine. Why,” he continued expansively, finding that he had her attention, “when I first went on the road I used to get hot when I struck some mutt who pulled lower prices on me or said he was over-stocked. But you don’t sell any goods by getting mad. I picked up one of these ‘Keep Smiling’ cards somewhere, and when I got blue I used to take a sneaking look at it and put on a grin and tell the stony-hearted merchant the funniest story I could think of and prove that our figures f.o.b. Peanutville were cheaper, when you figured in the freight, than Chicago or Cincinnati prices. I’ve made a study of freight tariffs; I can tell you the freight on white elephants all the way from Siam to Keokuk and back to Bangkok. I’ve heard the old boys down at the store talk about Farley till I know all his curves. Farley’s all right; there’s nothing the matter with Uncle Tim; only—you don’t want to shift gears on him too quick. You’ve got to do it gentle-like.”
Nan smiled forlornly, but Amidon was glad that he could evoke any sort of smile from her.
“It was all my fault,” she said. And then with a frankness that surprised her she added: “I had deceived him about something and he caught me at it. He gave me a big blowing-up, and I deserved it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that; but, of course, playing the game straight was always a big card with him. I guess Cecil will smooth him down.”
She was surprised to find herself talking to him so freely; his eagerness to take her mind away from the unpleasant episode with Farley gave her a comforting sense of his native kindliness. Her heart warmed with liking for him as she reappraised his good looks, his well-scrubbed appearance of a boy turned out for his first party by a doting mother; his general air of wholesomeness and good humor. He had known hard knocks, she did not question, but the bruises were well hidden. With all his slanginess and volubility there was a certain high-mindedness about him to which, in her hunger for sympathy, she gave fullest value.
He was afraid of her further confidences; afraid that she would disclose something she would regret later, and this he foresaw might embarrass their subsequent relations. She had been humiliated by Farley’s abuse, and it was not fair, he argued, to take advantage of her present state of mind by allowing her to tell more of the trouble. But he was not able at once to change the current of her thoughts.
“You know,” she said, sitting up straight and folding her hands on her knees, “I’ve been thinking a lot of things since I saw you out there by the river—about old times, and wondering whether it was good or bad luck that took me away from Belleville and brought me up here. I’d have been better off if I’d stayed there. I’d probably have been washing dishes in the Belleville hotel if the Farleys hadn’t picked me up, a dirty little beggar, and tried to make something decent out of me! I’m saying that to you because you know all about me. You’ve made your own way, and you’re a lot happier than I am, and you’re not under obligations to anybody; and here I am trying to climb a ladder my feet weren’t made for!”
“Cut all that out!” he expostulated. “Just because Uncle Tim’s been a little fretful, you needn’t think everything’s gone to the bow-wows. And as for staying in Belleville, why, the thought of it gives me shivers! There ain’t any use talking about that.”
Her face expressed relief at the vigor with which he sprang to her defense, and he plunged ahead.
“Say, speaking of dining-room girls, there was a girl at that Belleville hotel that was some girl for sure. She was fruit to the passing eye, and a mutt carrying samples for a confectionery house called her Gladys one day, her real name being Sarah, and asked her how she’d like going to the movies with him after she got the dishes washed; and she landed one order of poached cold-storage eggs on his bosom the neatest you ever saw. Some men never learn how to size up character, and any fool could ’a’ told that that girl wasn’t open to a jolly from a sweet-goods peddler who’d never passed that way before. Sarah’s mother owns the hotel, and Sarah only helps in the dining-room Saturday nights to let the regular crockery-smasher off to punch the ivories for the Methodist choir practice. I was sitting next that chap and he thought he’d show me what a winner he was. I’m not justifying Sarah’s conduct, and about a half-portion of the golden side of that order caught me on the ear. I merely mention it to show you that you had better not think much of the life of the dining-room girl, which ain’t all the handbills make out.”
“I hope,” remarked Nan, “that she didn’t break the plate!”
“No more,” he came back promptly, “than you could break a ten-dollar bill at a charity fair. That’s another thing I learned from Cecil. He got me to take a stroll with him through a charity bazaar last winter—just to protect him from the snares of the huntress, he said. He started in with ten tens and had to borrow five I was hiding from my creditors before we got back to the door. And all we carried out of the place was a pink party-bag Cecil handed a tramp we found freezing to death outside and hoping a little charity would ooze through the windows.”
“I was at the fancy-work counter at the fair,” said Nan, “and I remember that Mr. Eaton bought something. I didn’t see you, though.”
“I noticed that you didn’t; I was plumb scared you might! There I go again! Plumb scared! Oh, Cecil, if you had heard me then!”
He was wondering just how he happened to be sitting in a parlor on a fashionable street, talking to the only girl he had ever known whose name figured in the society columns, quite as jauntily as he talked with any of the stenographers or salesgirls he knew. He was confident that parlor conversation among the favored of heaven was not of the sort he had, in his own phrase, been “handing out.” This thought gave him pause. He shook his cuffs from under the sleeves of his blue serge coat with a gesture he had caught from Eaton, and felt nervously of the knot of his four-in-hand.
Nan was asking herself whether the fact that a young fellow of Amidon’s deficiencies could interest and amuse her wasn’t pretty substantial proof that he was the kind of young man the gods had designed for her companions. A year ago she would have resented his appearance in the house; to-night she had a feeling that his right to be there was as sound as her own. A different fling of the dice, and it might have been he whom the Farleys rescued from poverty and obscurity.
In spite of his absurdities, she was conscious of definite manly qualities in him. Several times she caught him scrutinizing her sharply, as though something about her puzzled him and gave him concern. His manners were very good—thanks, perhaps, to his adored Eaton; and she liked his clean, fresh look and good humor. After her talk with Eaton on the golf links, she had wondered whether the lawyer wasn’t making a butt of him; but she dismissed this now as unjust to Eaton, and as appraising Amidon’s intelligence at too low a figure. During this reverie he waited patiently for her to speak, imagining that her mind was still upon her troubles, and when the silence became prolonged he rallied for a fresh attack.
“If you’d rather read,” he remarked, “we’ll hang up the silence sign the way they have it in the library reading-room and I’ll say prayers till Cecil comes down.”
“Oh, pardon me!” she laughed contritely. “You see I am treating you as an old friend. Why don’t you go on and talk. You’ve had ever so many interesting adventures, and I need to be amused. Please don’t think I’m always like this; I hope you’ll see me some time when I’m not in the dumps.”
“I should be afraid to,” he retorted boldly; and then feeling that Eaton would have spurned such banality, ejaculated: “Oh, rot! Let me scratch that out and say something decent. Just for instance,”—and his face sobered,—“I think you’re nice! You were perfectly grand to me that day down on the river. I told Cecil about that, and I could see it made a hit with him; it set me up with him—that a girl like you would be polite to a scrub like me.”
“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “I’m not proud of myself: I’m a failure, a pretty sad fizzle, at that.”
She ignored his rapid phrases of protest and asked him how much time he spent in town.
“Well, I’m likely to spend a good deal, from now on. The boss has been shaking things up again, and he called me in by telephone yesterday and changed my job. That’s the way with him; he won’t show up sometimes for six weeks, and then he gets down early some morning and scares everybody to death.
“I thought I was settled on the road for the rest of my life, and now he’s made a job for me to help the credit man—who doesn’t want me—and take country customers out to lunch. A new job made just for my benefit. And all because of a necktie Cecil gave me. The boss saw me sporting it one day and asked me where I got it. I had to make a show-down, and he thought I was kidding him. You see Cecil’s about the last man he’d ever think of giving me presents. If I’d laid that necktie on any other living human being, it wouldn’t have cut a bit of ice; but when I said, as fresh as paint, ‘John Cecil Eaton picked that up in New York for me,’ he laughed right out loud. ‘What’s the joke?’ I asked him; and he says, ‘Oh, Eaton never gave me any haberdashery, and I’ve known him all my life.’ And like the silly young zebra I am, I came back with, ‘Well, maybe that’s the reason!’ You’d have thought he’d fire me for that; but it seemed to sort o’ make us better acquainted. He’s the prince, all right!”
She had been trying, more or less honestly, to put Copeland out of her mind. Her knowledge of him as a business man had been the haziest; one never thought of Billy Copeland as a person preoccupied with business. She was startled when Amidon asked abruptly:—
“Of course, you know the boss?”
It was possible that Amidon had heard the gossip that connected her name with his employer’s, and she answered carelessly:—
“Oh, yes; I know Mr. Copeland.”
“I guess everybody knows William B.,” said Amidon. “He’s got the pep—unadulterated cayenne; he isn’t one of these corpses that are holding the town back. He’s a live wire, all right.”
Then, realizing that he had ventured upon thin ice in mentioning Copeland, he came back to shore at once.
“Cecil said that this being my first call, about thirty minutes would do for me, so I guess it’s time for me to skid. He must be handing out a pretty good line of talk on the upper deck.”
She begged him not to leave her alone, saying that Farley lived by rules fixed by his doctor and that the nurse was likely to interrupt the call at any minute. As he stood uncertain whether to go or wait for Eaton, they heard the lawyer saying good-bye, and in a moment he came down.
Nan looked at him quickly, but was able to read nothing in his impassive face.
“I hope you two have been getting better acquainted,” Eaton remarked. “Mr. Farley and I have had a splendid talk; I never found him more amusing. One of the most interesting men I ever knew! What have you been talking about? The silence down here has been ominously painful!”
“Mr. Amidon has been telling me of the egg-throwing habits of the waitresses in my native town. Life here in the city is nothing to what it is down on the river. He’s almost made me homesick!”
“My dear Amidon,” said Eaton severely, “have you been telling that story—in a private house? I thought when I brought you here you’d be on your good behavior. I’m sorry, Nan; I apologize for him. Of course, he mustn’t come back; I’ll see to it that he doesn’t.”
“Don’t be cruel!” laughed Nan. “We got on beautifully!”
They heard Farley’s groans and mutterings as the nurse put him to bed, and it seemed necessary to refer to him again before the men left.
“You won’t mind, Nan,” said Eaton, “if I say that Mr. Farley told me the cause of your little difficulty; I know the whole story. I think he probably won’t mention it to you again. I asked him not to. Just go on as though nothing had happened. It was unfortunate, of course; but I’ve persuaded him that your conduct is pardonable—really quite admirable from your standpoint. If anything further arises in regard to it, I wish you’d communicate with me, immediately.”
Ignoring her murmurs of gratitude, he turned to Jerry.
“Amidon, at this point we shake hands and move rapidly up the street. And, Nan, you needn’t be troubled because Mr. Amidon heard the last echoes of your difficulty. He’s perfectly safe,—discreet, wise,—though you’d never guess it. You may safely assume that he heard nothing. We must have some golf, you and I. My game’s coming up!”
She went with them to the street door, where Amidon, in executing a final bow, nearly fell backward down the steps.