DOUBTS

The time of jubilation—At the bankers'—The last word from Farson—Sarah and I go to see the parade—We meet the Drounds—A fading life—Sad thoughts—Jane speaks out—What next?—Sarah is no longer jealous

It was that autumn of jubilation after the Spanish War. The morning when I drove through the city to the bankers' office, workmen were putting up a great arch across the avenue for the coming day of celebration. Our people had shown the nations of the world the might and the glory in us. Forgotten now was the miserable mismanagement of our brave men, the shame of rotten rations, the fraud of politicians—all but the pride of our strength! A new spirit had come over our country during these months—a spirit of daring and adventure, of readiness for vast enterprises. That business world of which I was a part was boiling with activities. The great things that had been done in the past in the light of the present seemed but the deeds of babes. And every man who had his touch upon affairs felt the madness of the times.

Among the gentlemen gathered in the bankers' office that morning was my old friend Farson. I had not seen him since our unpleasant luncheon at the railroad station. He greeted me courteously enough, as if he had once been acquainted with somebody by my name. It was apparent that he had come there to represent what was left of the old New England interests in the railroad properties; but he did not count in that gathering. The men at Morris Brothers listened to me most of the time that morning!

As we broke up for luncheon Farson congratulated me dryly on the success I had met with in the negotiations.

"I hope, then, we shall have your support," I remarked, forgetting our past dispute.

"I am here to see that my friends are taken care of," he replied grimly; "all we hope is to get our money back from the properties. My people do not understand you and your generation. We are better apart."

"I am sorry you think so," I said, understanding well enough what he meant.

"I am sorry, too: sorry for you and for our country in the years to come. For she it is who suffers most by such ideals as you stand for."

"I think that you are mistaken there," I answered peaceably. "We are the ones who are making this country great. If it weren't for men like me, you good people wouldn't be doing any business to speak of. There wouldn't be much to be done!"

"Our fathers found enough to do," he retorted dryly, "and they did not buy judges nor maintain lobbies in the legislature."

"There wasn't any money in it those days!" I laughed.

Talking thus we reached the place where I was to lunch with some others, and I asked him to join the party. The uncompromising old duck refused; he wouldn't even break bread with me at a hotel table.

"I am sorry you won't eat with me, Mr. Farson. I don't hope to convert you to my way of thinking and feeling. But you were good to me and saved my life when I was in a tight place, and I am glad to think that no loss ever came to you or your friends through me. I have made money for you all. And I wish you would stay with me and let me make a lot more for you in this new deal we are putting through."

"Thank you," he said with a dry little smile, "but I and my friends will be content with getting back the money we have spent. Mr. Harrington, there is one thing that you Western gentlemen—no! it is unfair to cast that slur on one section of the country, and I have met honorable gentlemen West as well as East—but there is one thing that you gentlemen of finance to-day fail to understand—there is always a greater rascal than any one of you somewhere, and it is usually only a question of time when you will meet him. When that time comes he will pick the flesh from your bones, and no one will care very much what happens to you then! And one thing more: to one who has lived life, and knows what it is, there is mighty little happiness in a million dollars! Good morning, sir."

He was a lovable old fool, though! All through luncheon and the business talk that followed in the afternoon the old gentleman's remarks kept coming back to me in a queer, persistent way. Feeling my oats as I did, in the full flood of my success, there was yet something unsatisfied about my heart. My brain was busy with the plans of the Morris Brothers, but nothing more.

After the work of the day was over, Sarah and I drove up to the Park to see the parade of fine horses and carriages and smart-looking folks who were out taking their airing. It was a beautiful, warm October day, and Sarah took considerable interest in the show. The faces of those in the carriages were not much to look at, take them by and large. They were the faces of men and women who ate and drank and enjoyed themselves too much. They were the faces of the people who lived in the rich hotels, who made and spent the money of our country. And as I looked at them, Farson's last words came back to my thoughts:—

"There's mighty little happiness in a million dollars."

"Van," Sarah said after a time, "let us drive over the avenue. I want to look at that house the Rainbows spoke to us about."

So we turned out of the Park toward the house on the avenue which we thought of buying; for we had been talking somewhat of moving to New York to live after this year.

As we got out of our carriage in front of the lofty gray stone house, a man and a woman came toward us on the walk. The man seemed old and moved heavily, and the woman's face was bent to one side to him. Sarah glanced at them and stood still.

"Van," she whispered, "there are Mr. and Mrs. Dround!"

She hesitated a moment, and then, as the two came nearer, she stepped forward to meet them, and Jane looked up at us. The two women glanced at each other, then spoke. Mrs. Dround said something to her husband, and he gave me a slow look of returning recognition, as if my face recalled vague memories.

"Mr. Harrington?" he said questioningly, taking my hand in a hesitating way, as though he were not quite sure about me yet. "Oh, yes! I am glad to see you again. How is Mr. Carmichael? Well, I hope, and prospering?"

The man's mind was a blank!

"Yes, Mrs. Dround and I have been abroad this winter," he continued, "but we have come back to live here. America is the proper place for Americans, I have always believed. I have no patience with those people who expatriate themselves. Yes, Mrs. Dround wanted me to take a place in Kent, but I would not listen to it. I know where my duty lies,"—he straightened himself with slow pompousness,—"How are the children? All well, I hope?"

Jane was talking with Sarah, and the four of us after a while entered the house, which was just being finished by the contractor. In the hall Mr. Dround turned to Sarah and made some remark about the house, and the agent, who happened to be there, led them upstairs. Jane and I followed.

"So you have come home to live?" I asked.

"Yes!" She sank down on a workman's bench, with a sigh of weariness. As I looked at her more closely, it seemed to me that at last age had touched her. There were white strands in her black hair, and there were deep circles beneath the dark eyes—eyes that were dull from looking without seeing anything in particular.

"It was best for Henry," she added quietly. "He is restless over there. You see, he forgets everything so quickly now. It has been so for nearly a year."

There was the story of her days—the watcher and keeper of this childish man, whose mind was fading away before its time. With a sense of the cruelty in it, I turned away from her hastily and looked out of the window.

"I do not mind, most times," she said gently, as in answer to my action. "It is easier to bear than some things of life."

"Shame!" I muttered.

"But there are days," she burst out more like her old self, "when I simply cannot stand it! But let us not waste these precious minutes with my troubles. Let us talk of you. You are still young in spite of—"

"The gray hair and the two hundred and forty pounds? I don't feel so young as I might, Jane!"

She colored at the sound of her name.

"But you have got much for your gray hairs—you have lived more than most men!"

"Tell me," I demanded suddenly,—"I know it was your hand that pulled me from the last hole. It was your money that Carboner risked? I knew it. Old Carboner wouldn't tell, but I knew it!"

"And you were on the point of refusing my help," she added with an accusing smile. "I should have scorned you, if you had gone away without it!"

"Oh, I didn't hesitate long! And I am glad now it was yours, in more ways than one," I added quickly. "It was a profitable deal,—Carboner wrote you the terms?"

"Yes, but it would have made no difference if it had come out badly—you can't know what it meant to me to do that! To work with you with all my strength! It was the first real joy I ever got from my money, and perhaps the last, too. For you are beyond my help now."

"How did Carboner get hold of your husband's stock?" I persisted curiously.

"That is my secret!" she smiled back with a look of her old self. "Why should you want to know? That is so like a man! Always wanting to know why. Believe in the fairies for once!"

"It was a mighty clever fairy this time. She had lots of power. Do you see that, after all, in spite of all the talk about genius and destiny and being self-made and all that, I did not win the game by myself? I would have been broke now, a discredited gambler, if it hadn't been for your helping hand. It was you! And I guess, Jane, we all have to have some help."

"You don't begrudge me the little help I gave you—the small share I had in your fortune?"

"No, I don't mind. I am glad of it."

That was sincere enough. I had come to see that no man can stand alone, and I was not ashamed to have taken my help from the hand of a woman.

"But suppose I had gambled with your money and lost it? I might have easily enough."

"Do you think I should have cared?"

"No, Jane, I guess not. But I should have!"

"It's been the joy of these terrible years, knowing that you were here in the world accomplishing what you were born to do! And that I had a little—oh, such a little!—share in helping you do it. Poor I, who have never done anything worth while!"

"It seems queer that a woman should set so much store on what a man does."

"It's beyond a man's power to know that! But try to think what you would be if you were a helpless cripple, tied to your chair. Don't you suppose that when some strong, handsome athlete came your way with all his health, you would admire him, get interested in him, and like to watch those muscles at work, just the muscles you couldn't use? I think so. And if a good fate put it in your power to help him—you, the poor cripple in your chair—help him to win his race, wouldn't you be thankful? I can tell you that one cripple blesses you because you are you—a man!"

The excitement of her feelings brought back the dark glow to her face, and made her beautiful once more. Ideas seemed to burn away the faded look and gave her the power that passion gives ordinary women.

"You and I think alike, I love to believe. Start us from the two Poles, and we would meet midway. We are not little people, thank God, you and I. We did not make a mess of our lives! My friend, it is good to know that," she ended softly.

"Yes," I admitted, understanding what she meant. "We parted."

"We parted! We lived a thousand miles from one another. What matters it? I said to myself each day: 'Out there, in the world, lives a man who thinks and acts and feels as I would have a man think and act and feel. He is not far away.'"

She laid a hand lightly on my arm and smiled. And we were silent until the voices of the others in the hall above reminded us of the present. Jane rose, and her face had faded once more into its usual calm.

"You are thinking of moving to New York? What for?"

I spoke of my new work—the checker-board that had been under discussion all day at the bankers'.

"You are rich enough," she remarked. "That means so many millions more to your account."

"No, not just that," I protested. "It's the solution to the little puzzle you and I were working at over the atlas in your library that day years ago. It is like a problem in human physics: there were obstacles in the way, but the result was sure from the start."

"But you are near the end of it—and then what?"

"I suppose there will be others!" After a time I added, half to myself: "But there's no happiness in it. There is no happiness."

"Do you look for happiness? That is for children!"

"Then what is the end of it?"

For of a sudden the spring of my energies was slackened within me, and the work that I was doing seemed senseless. Somehow a man's happiness had slipped past me on the road, and now I missed it. There was the joy we might have had, she and I, and we had not taken it. Had we been fools to put it aside? She answered my thoughts.

"We did not want it! Remember we did not want that! Don't let me think that, after all, you regret! I could not stand that—no woman could bear it."

Her voice was like a cry to my soul. On the stairs above Mr. Dround was saying to Sarah:—

"No, I much prefer our Chicago style of building, with large lots, where you can get sunshine on all four sides. It is more healthy, don't you think, Mrs. Harrington?"

And Sarah answered:—

"Yes, I quite agree with you, Mr. Dround. I don't like this house at all—it's too dark. We shall have to look farther, I guess."

Jane turned her face to mine. Her eyes were filled with tears, and her mouth trembled. "Don't regret—anything," she whispered. "We have had so much!"

"Van," Sarah called from the stairs, "you haven't seen the house! But it isn't worth while. I am sure we shouldn't like it."

"You mustn't look for your Chicago garden on Fifth Avenue," Mrs. Dround laughed.

As we left the house, Sarah turned to Jane and asked her to come back with us to the hotel for dinner. But the Drounds had an engagement for the evening, and so an appointment was made for the day following to dine together. When we had said good-by and were in the carriage, Sarah remarked reflectively:—

"Jane looks like an old woman—don't you think so, Van?"