Carolyn of the sunny heart

THE GRIFFIN

The doctor went away and came back again before the pale lady's husband, for whom Mr. Cameron telephoned, arrived at the little apartment. The patient was then better, but still very weak.

"A general breakdown," said the physician to Mr. Cameron. "No more than I expected. I have treated her now and then—and the baby. He is a fine little fellow, but not robust. How could he be?

"I've got to tell that young man a thing or two. He can't keep this woman and the child here—"

"And why does he? I happen to know that he is earning a fair salary," Mr. Cameron said.

"Yes. He is—now. But they are burdened with debts. At the time the baby was born they got very deeply into debt. You can see what sort they are. Come of wealthy families, both of them. Trouble somewhere. And the young folks did not know how to help themselves, nor what to do. Not as poor people do. After all, the poor have the best of it when it comes to work and living," said the practical physician.

"This young fool had to have a specialist for his wife when the baby came. And those fellows don't work for nothing, and have to have cash on the nail. And with the specialist came the day and night nurses and all that folderol. They did not live here then, I can assure you. Nor did I attend the woman and her child until after they did come here.

"At first, I presume, people made it easy for him to go into debt because of his father's name. But when he had spent all he had, and gone in as deep as he could to make her and the baby comfortable, the girl finally awoke to the situation. She is a good deal of a woman, frail as she appears. She insisted in curtailing and cutting down expenses. Oh, they are both as square as can be; but she has the push and determination, after all.

"They are paying their debts now. She insists on it. They do not owe me anything—not a penny. I would not take money for this call. I am no specialist," said the medical practitioner, bitterly. "But I feel it my duty to talk straight out to the young man. If his wife and baby remain here it will be the undertaker, not the doctor, who will be called!"

"I'm going to tell him a thing or two myself," promised Mr. Cameron huskily.

But when Joe Bassett ran up the narrow stairway and burst into the crowded kitchen to face the doctor and Carolyn's father, neither of those gentlemen could really scold the young fellow. That he was very, very anxious about his wife and child was plainly shown in his countenance and his manner.

"Is she—is she—"

"She's better," said the doctor briskly. "For the time being. Your friends here—especially the lady—have done all they can for your wife. A doctor can't do much, Mr. Bassett. I have told Mrs. Bassett so before. The city is no place for her and your baby through the hot weather. The summer is only beginning. Find some way of getting them out of this place—and at once. That is all I can tell you. You are likely to lose them both if you do not take this advice."

"That advice is harder to take, Doctor, than your medicine," said Bassett faintly. "I will do my best—"

"And why did you not tell me?" demanded Carolyn's father, as the busy medical man made off. "My wife suspected who Carolyn's 'pale lady' was. But I did not dream—

"See here, Bassett! Something must be done about this at once. Your wife and baby must get out of here. It is evident she is not used to the city's heat, and most certainly she is not used to such a locality and such a house as this."

"Don't you suppose I know all that?" groaned the young man. "But fixed as we are—"

"Are you in debt?" demanded Mr. Cameron bluntly.

"Yes."

"And have you worried about the bills you owe?"

"Of course."

"Let the other fellow do the worrying," was Mr. Cameron's iconoclastic declaration. "To sacrifice your wife and child for the sake of paying debts is nothing less than a crime."

"But she is so very anxious for us to pay those bills."

"Put your foot down. Be boss in your own house for once!" exclaimed Mr. Cameron, smiling rather grimly. "I am usually in favour of a woman having her own way—she almost always gets it in any case. But this is a matter about which your wife's judgment cannot be trusted. See what you can do, and I'll talk with you again tomorrow, Bassett. I see Mrs. Cameron is about ready to go. Something must be done about it."

Carolyn had been standing by, the loop of Prince's leash in her hand, and staring with all her might at Joe Bassett. At last she ejaculated:

"Then your real name is Mr. Laird! I never!"

The young man was too much troubled at the moment to give Carolyn any answer. The latter and her father and Prince went down to the sidewalk to wait for Mrs. Cameron to join them; where they were eyed by the neighbours and the children, who considered the Camerons as beings from another world.

Carolyn and her parents had their dinner in a restaurant that evening, for it was altogether too late to get it at home. Carolyn May might have enjoyed the occasion more had she not been so sleepy; and Prince sank frankly into slumber under the restaurant table, and snored.

So the little girl did not hear all that was said by her father and mother regarding the young couple whose troubles seemed to be forced upon the Camerons' attention; nor did the little girl understand the plans made at the time for the Bassetts.

However, Mr. Cameron left for downtown much earlier than usual the next morning. First of all he telephoned to a certain Wall Street office and after a great deal of trouble he obtained the favour of a tentative appointment with the great man known as the Griffin of Wall Street.

"An interview with St. Peter at the heavenly portals would be little more difficult to arrange," Mr. Cameron told his wife, "than an appointment with the Griffin." Only that the magnate had found from long experience that it was the part of wisdom to treat the newspaper representatives well, was Mr. Cameron able to get the attention of one of Mr. Henry Bassett's secretaries.

This individual the newspaper editor had first to see when he reached the offices of the Griffin. He was a sharp-featured man, very dark and with black eyebrows stenciled distinctly over his nose.

"You did not explain your business very clearly to me over the 'phone, Mr. Cameron," said the secretary. "Only because you are from the Beacon did I take the chance of having you come here; but Mr. Bassett does not know yet that you wish to see him."

"My business with him is quite a personal matter, Mr.—?"

"Inness," finished the secretary.

"Mr. Inness. A private matter entirely."

"You mean it is something personal concerning yourself, Mr. Cameron?"

"Not at all. It is intimately connected with Mr. Bassett's affairs. So intimately, indeed, that I could not possibly explain it to you, Mr. Inness."

The man was evidently of a mind to bid Mr. Cameron curtly begone. Yet the Beacon was a powerful party organ, and just at this time the Griffin had political ends to serve. Although Mr. Cameron did not ask for the interview in the name of his paper, Inness was a cautious man. That is why he had held his lucrative situation with the Griffin for ten years or more.

"I will take your card, Mr. Cameron," he said at last, holding out his hand for the caller's bit of pasteboard. "But I cannot promise you an interview under the circumstances. Mr. Bassett does not like mysteries."

"No. He is not going to like this one," rejoined the editor. "Nor do I like it. But I feel it to be my duty to see him."

"Mr. Cameron," said Inness dryly, "I would not possess your overpowering sense of duty for worlds," and he walked out of the reception room with the card in his hand.

Had the newspaper man come on his own behalf he might have felt some trepidation; but consideration for Joe Bassett and his wife and baby had brought him to the Griffin's office, and he felt no burden of a personal nature upon his mind. When Inness finally beckoned him from the door of the private suite, the caller went quite cheerfully to meet the man whose reputation for being a Tartar was as broad as his financial activities were known.

Mr. Henry Bassett beat no round of the bushes; he came directly to the point. "You are John Lewis Cameron, of the Beacon," he said. "I do not know you. Inness says your call is not on business for your paper. What do you want?"

"I wish to interest you, Mr. Bassett, in the needs of an unfortunate family in which I am interested—but because of no ordinary charitable instinct upon my part or yours. I am no charity collector, nor is this case of destitution one that can be brought to the attention of anybody but yourself."

"What do you mean?" demanded the Griffin roughly. "Mrs. Bassett usually attends to all such matters. I do not consider myself a judge of their worth."

"There are certain elements in this matter which preclude my speaking to anybody but you about it, Mr. Bassett."

The financier looked startled. His continued silence enabled Mr. Cameron to go on:

"The people I speak of are a man and his wife and child. They are not ordinary people. I have not known much about them until lately. I find that they live in a frightfully unpleasant neighbourhood, that their surroundings are most uncongenial, and that they lack all the luxuries—even those necessities—which people of respectable bringing-up must have."

"Why do you tell me all this?" demanded the millionaire.

"Because it concerns you, concerns you deeply. The young woman and her baby may not live through the summer if she is obliged to stay in that horrible apartment which is the best her husband has been able to afford."

"Who is he?" shot in Henry Bassett.

"He is your son. And his wife and your grandchild are dying in that place they live in. What are you going to do about it?"

The change that came over Henry Bassett's face shook even Mr. Cameron. The editor's experience with all sorts and conditions of men enabled him to hide his own feelings well; so he merely stared back into the passion-distorted countenance of the Wall Street man.

"You dare to come to me from that cur? He has sent you to try to squeeze money out of me—for himself and that wretched woman, and her ill-begotten brat?"

"You are quite wrong, Mr. Bassett," his caller said coldly. "Your son has no idea that I have come to you in his behalf. Nor does your daughter-in-law know of it. I merely believe that you should be told their circumstances."

Henry Bassett actually snorted. He tried to speak, but for the moment his rage would not let him.

"The boy is doing the very best he can. He has not yet made any very great success it is true. He happens at present to be working on the Beacon. That is how I come to know something about his circumstances. He got woefully into debt when your grandchild was born, and is still struggling to square himself with his creditors."

"Bah!" suddenly roared the rich man, starting half out of his chair and unable to control himself further. "What did he do with the ten thousand dollars he had when he walked out of my house determined to marry that wasteful, useless, luxury-loving woman? Oh, I knew what she was and I knew what she would bring him to."

The phrases came raspingly from Henry Bassett's lips. It was plain that he felt deeply his son's defection. But the mention of ten thousand dollars—

"The boy is a fool," went on the millionaire. "Worse, he is a knave. But she made him that. The story was brought to me how he hung about certain cheap brokerage houses all that first winter that he left me. That is where that ill-gotten money went. He gambled it away, of course. Ten thousand wouldn't suit My Lady! She must have more, and the young fool doubtless tried to pyramid his capital—and lost it, instead, and as he deserved.

"Sin brings its own punishment," said the millionaire harshly but impressively. "That boy was determined to marry against my command and his mother's wishes. The girl was nothing but a flibbertigibbet—a useless baggage. She had been brought up by Wetherby Gaines and his foolish wife to do nothing; and when they were dead she had nothing. All she could do was to lead my son into extravagance.

"To please her—to meet her extravagant demands—he tried to double that stolen ten thousand in the market."

"Stolen?" gasped Mr. Cameron.

The millionaire was silent. He licked his lips, glaring at his visitor like a wolf. In his rage he had gone farther and said more than he had intended. But he was too angry to retract or deny the truth.

"You have learned something that I have not even told to my wife," he said hoarsely. "It is a shame that I shall never get over. When I threatened that boy with dismissal from his home if he insisted upon marrying the girl, he knew I had brought ten thousand dollars home for a special purpose. It was in the library safe which he knew how to open as well as I did.

"He made his choice and left the house the next morning. When he was gone I found the money had gone with him. That is what this woman you prate of brought my son to. Fool he was, but never knave before! If it had not been for her luxurious tastes and her wasteful extravagance, he would never have taken that money. He was crazy about her. And nothing but ready money would buy her for him. That is the sum and substance of the sordid affair.

"There! I have never told a soul before of this fact, not even his mother. And I trust to your honour not to repeat it. But do not come to me for charity for that boy, or for the woman who has wasted his life. They are nothing to me—nor will they ever be! I long since washed my hands of them."