The banker and the bear

“Have you any idea what it is that’s keeping Mr. Bagsbury?” Alice asked of Jack. She had been expecting him every moment while they were at dinner, and the tone of her question betrayed nervousness.

“No,” said Jack, abstractedly, then, rousing himself: “no, he just told me I’d better come out here to dinner and tell you not to wait for him as he would be late. He said it might be eight o’clock before he could get home.”

“Then you had two invitations,” said Dick.

“That’s why I ate two dinners.”

Alice rose. “I promised Martha to help her with her lessons. I’ll leave you to entertain each other until John comes back.”

“You must be blue,” Dick remarked when she was gone. “You never make jokes like that except when you’re blue. Oh, I know, you want to smoke. Let’s go into the library.”

She led the way thither; and, after turning on the electric lights, seated herself at the end of the sofa. Jack lighted a cigar and stood looking about with a frown.

“Not satisfied yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “This room’s all right,” he said, “but we see it too plainly.” He turned off all the light, and groping his way to one of the windows drew wide the curtain. For a moment he stood looking out; then he raised the window, and they heard the summer shower which was beating straight down through the still air upon the pavement. The big arc lamp from the street threw a patch of white light upon the floor.

“For purposes of romance,” he said, as he seated himself near her on the sofa, “that doesn’t quite come up to the moon; but it does its best, and it has sense enough not to go out just because it rains.”

During the next two minutes, as Dick watched the rim of fire which glowed now bright, now dull, between Jack Dorlin’s cigar and its ash, she thought of many things to say, but none of them seemed to fit. Jack, apparently, had no idea of saying anything, and the silence seemed to her to be acquiring a discomforting significance. It was most absurd to feel that way about it; she and Jack were certainly old enough friends.

“Luckily, we don’t need it for purposes of romance—”

That wasn’t just what she meant, either, and she added hastily, “You know this is to be a business conversation. We’ve got to decide what we’ll tell John when he comes home.”

“That’s so,” said Jack, vaguely. Evidently he had nothing more to contribute to the conversation.

“Don’t you suppose,” Dick began again, “that perhaps the bank was hurt by Mr. Pickering’s failure? John had just lent him a great deal of money, you know.”

“He’s got the lard.”

“Yes; but the lard isn’t worth nearly as much as it was.”

“That’s so,” said Jack, more abstractedly than ever.

“Are you trying to be stupid?” she asked almost impatiently.

“I don’t think I’m stupid at all. I’m just enjoying things. That patch of electric light, and this rain, and this—”

She interrupted him: “And I’ve been disturbing your peaceful soul. Just let me turn on a light for a minute to find a book, and then I’ll leave you to the contemplation of your street lamp.”

She spoke laughingly, but he saw that she meant it.

“Don’t go, Dick. I want to talk to you. I was just getting myself together.”

Dick dropped back upon the sofa from which she had half arisen. The situation was going from bad to worse.

“I must own up at last to something that I’ve known for months and haven’t been willing to admit to myself. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it wasn’t so; but it’s no use for me to pretend any longer. I’m making myself ridiculous by plugging away down there at the bank.”

Dick gasped. She was glad the room was dark, for she could feel her face burning.

“Please don’t think,” Jack went on, quite innocently, “that it’s the work I don’t like; I really enjoy the drudgery. It’s the doing it so badly that’s discouraging. I’m just a regular fool down there. Why, I come up here evenings and laugh over Hillsmead, but I’ll wager it isn’t a circumstance to the way Hillsmead laughs over me. It isn’t as though I shirked my work and didn’t care. I’ve been doing the best I know, and worrying myself gray-headed over it; I’m kept back by sheer mental incapacity.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Oh, I thought so myself at first,” he answered, with a laugh, “and I went on telling myself so, long after I knew it wasn’t.”

There was a short pause, and then he went on:

“I went into the bank partly because it was an amusing novelty, and partly with the insane idea that I was rather more intelligent than the average born-and-bred bank clerk, and that I could do his work unusually well. But the main reason why I did it was that I wanted to convince you that I was really some good after all. It was a sort of gallery play when you come to look at it.”

“I think that’s about the unfairest thing you ever said: unfair to both of us.”

“I don’t mean it just as it sounds. It wasn’t your fault that you never took me seriously. You couldn’t, because I didn’t myself. I was contented with amusing myself at the expense of people who took things seriously.

“I’ve learned other things in the last six months besides the fact that I’ll never be worth more than fifteen dollars a week in a bank.”

His words halted there. They had been coming easily enough until now, for they had put off a little the declaration that he knew he must make. They had meant nothing, but this next sentence—yes, it must be the next—might sweep away the hope that had grown to be the dearest thing he owned.

The words were there, but he could not force them from his lips. If he had but known it, there was small need of them. Her hand was resting on the sofa right beside him. He knew, because his own had touched it a moment ago; she had not taken it away. Yes, he could have told her the story without words. But at last he went on again, speaking very slowly:—

“Do you remember—I fancy you’ve not forgotten—long ago—it was the second summer vacation you spent with us, the summer after I graduated—one August evening I told you—”

“Yes, I remember.”

“And you told me I was mistaken; that you were perfectly sure that I didn’t have the least idea of what it meant that I had told you. You remember it, don’t you, Dick?”

She nodded. He was not looking at her, but he took her silence for assent.

“I’ve learned these last few months that you were right; that I was mistaken—”

It was not at all remarkable that neither of them heard John Bagsbury’s steps as he neared the library door, nor that when he opened it they both started violently. John peered about in the dark, groped his way to the switch, and turned on the light. Then he saw who were sitting on the sofa.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I—Alice told me you were here—” He looked at them doubtfully for a moment, and then repeating, “Excuse me,” he turned to leave the room.

“Oh, don’t go!” Dick exclaimed, somewhat breathlessly, “we were waiting for you to come home. We wanted to talk with you—we turned out the light because—”

Here the words seemed to stick. She turned sharply away, toward the window, as it happened, and started to rise. John followed the glance. “Don’t get up,” he said quickly. “I’ll draw the curtain.”

As John turned his back, Dick looked squarely at Jack Dorlin as though challenging him to read whatever he could in her flushed face.

“Talk,” she commanded under her breath.

“I’ve been telling Miss Haselridge,” he said when John had returned and seated himself near them, “that I thought I’d quit the bank.”

“I’m glad of that,” said the Banker.

Jack had never learned how not to be disconcerted by John Bagsbury’s brief, unequivocal way of putting things. He had no wish to continue this conversation; but feeling that he owed it to Dick to keep things going somehow, he managed to give reasons for his decision.

“Understand,” said John, “it’s largely on your account that I’m glad you have decided to try something else. Your work, so far as I know, has been satisfactory. The trouble is you started out too late to do much at this sort of business, and you aren’t naturally cut out for it, anyway. I think you’re right, that you can do better at something else. But you’ve done a hundred per cent better than I thought you could; and if you’ll let me say so, you’ve increased my respect for you in about the same ratio. I’ll be glad of the change on my own account, too, because I’d rather know you as a friend from the outside than as one of my employees.”

John could hardly have given them a better opportunity to tell him what they had been planning to tell him of their suspicions regarding Sponley and Curtin; but perhaps because each was waiting for the other, or because neither could think of the right words to introduce so delicate a subject, it was John, very red and uncomfortable over the compliment he had just paid Jack, who broke the silence.

“Do you want to leave the bank at once?”

“N-no,” said Jack. “If you’re willing to keep me, I’d like to stay until I can decide what to do next.”

“Will Mr. Pickering’s failure hurt the bank?”

Dick asked the question rather nervously. It was an approach to what she wished to say about Curtin.

“Pickering hasn’t failed,” said John, in surprise; “what made you think he had?”

Between them they told him what they had seen on the Board of Trade; but they said nothing—it seemed impossible to say anything—of their encounter with Curtin.

“Pickering didn’t tell me what he meant to do,” said John, thoughtfully, “but I understood what the object of his move was. He’s in better shape than he was this morning. He busted the market himself, turned right around and sold to himself through other brokers.”

“What did he want to do that for?” she asked.

“Don’t you see?” said John; “he wants to buy all the lard there is. That puts the price up. Well, as soon as it was known that he was buying heavily, a lot of other fellows—some of them regular traders on the board, but more outsiders, who thought they saw a chance to get rich in ten minutes—came around and began to buy, too. Of course, as long as they’re buying, Pickering can’t get it all; so he busted the market, knocked the bottom right out of it, so as to shake out the little fellows who were getting in his way. He did it uncommon well, too. I don’t think I ever saw anything in provisions take a quicker tumble than lard did this afternoon. He must have caught a lot of small traders. He’s got more lard than ever, and he’s got the price hammered down, too, though that’ll get right back in a day or two. He may have to do the trick two or three times before they learn to leave him alone.”

“I suppose, from his point of view, that’s all right,” said Jack. “To me, who’ve never got the idea of it, it seems very much like running a knife into another fellow’s back. The business disgusted me this afternoon, when I couldn’t understand it; and now that I do, it seems worse.”

“I wonder how the little ones who were caught feel about it?” said Dick.

“Oh, it’s all business,” answered the Banker, slowly. “They know, or at least they ought to know, just what chance they run. What Pickering did was what they might have expected him to do; there wasn’t anything irregular about it. Though I admit,” he went on, “that, personally, I don’t like the idea of it. I’m glad it isn’t my business.”

“But do you think it’s honest?” she asked.

“Commercially honest,” he answered. “In any sort of business a man finds out before long that that’s a pretty complicated question. To people who live as you do, honesty must come pretty easily. But it takes a lot more than good intentions to make an honest—banker, for instance.”

“That’s the first time I thought of honesty as an accomplishment,” laughed Dick.

“Well,” said John Bagsbury, with a smile, “I mean all right; but if it came to a pinch, I don’t know how far I could bet on my own.”

The door-bell had rung while they were talking, and John glanced into the hall to see who the visitors were.

“Hello!” he exclaimed, “there are the Sponleys. Come in!” He hurried from the room to welcome them.

“Well, we haven’t told him,” said Jack. “Come on, let’s escape somewhere.”

Alice Bagsbury had heard the voices and was coming down the stairs, so that there was a momentary delay in the hall.

“If you don’t hurry, we’ll surely get cut off,” Jack continued eagerly. “Where shall we go? Into the dining room?”

But instead of answering him, Dick bowed, smiling to some one behind him, and he heard a voice saying, “Good evening, Miss Haselridge.”

He turned around and bowed to Mrs. Sponley with what appearance of cordiality he could muster. He was puzzled rather than annoyed. He had never known Dick to be slow before. Yet certainly they should have been able to escape easily.

“I came to talk over a little business with John,” said Sponley. “I don’t know why Harriet came.”

“And I came to—to hear Mr. Dorlin play; I had an intuition that he’d be here.” Harriet laughed as she spoke and turned to Jack. “Will you?” she asked. “Come, let’s go into the drawing-room.”

Musically, Jack was something of a classicist; but to-night, after he had dug his fingers into one or two vicious arpeggios, he began playing some very modern Russian music—music which suggests to the untutored ear the frightful possibility that the pianist is playing in the wrong key with his left hand. Jack enjoyed it; it served admirably as a vent to his irritation. What an evening he had had of it! Interrupted by John Bagsbury just as he was telling Dick—well, the most important thing one could tell a girl, and then interrupted by the Sponleys, just as he thought he had it on the tip of his tongue to tell John about Curtin. Mrs. Sponley was the worst offender: by her unseemly haste into the library she had cut off his retreat with Dick; then she had stranded him at the piano; and now, instead of talking to Mrs. Bagsbury, she was monopolizing Dick at the far side of the room. As he thought of his grievances, his interpretation of the very modern Russian music grew more and more enthusiastic, until it seemed fairly inspired. When he finished, there was a request for more; but it was faint.

He looked helplessly about the room for an instant; no, there was nothing else for it. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must be going.” He shook hands with Alice, bowed to Mrs. Sponley, and then looked hard at Dick. But she returned his unspoken message with only a nod of farewell. “Come again, as soon as you can,” she said.

Jack strode down the front steps, for once in his life thoroughly angry. Whatever Dick might think of him, however tired she might be of having him tell her that he loved her, he at least deserved a hearing. He knew that she could have escaped from the library; that just now she might easily have excused herself and followed him into the hall, as she had done a dozen times before. She had chosen that way of telling him that she did not wish him to finish what he had begun to tell her; what he had kept himself from telling her all these last six months.

So through the still pouring rain, up this street and down that, without rain-coat or umbrella, splashed Jack Dorlin, angry, miserable, promising himself a vengeance, and calling himself a cad for thinking of such a thing; making new resolves, good and bad, at every street corner, and rejoicing only in the water which drained from the brim of his straw hat and drenched his thin-clad shoulders.

Truly it is a madness, though not confined to midsummer.