The banker and the bear

On this Christmas Eve Dick Haselridge was picking her way swiftly through the holiday crowd, but her glance roved alertly over the scene, and everything she saw seemed to please her. The cries of the shivering toy venders on the sidewalk, and the clashing of gongs on the overcrowded cable cars that passed, came to her ears with a note of merriment that must have been assumed especially for Christmastide. To walk rapidly was no easy matter, for the motion of the crowd was irregular; now fast, across some gusty, ill-lighted spot, now slowing to a mere stroll, and now ceasing altogether before a particularly attractive shop window. The wind, too, had acquired a mischievous trick of pouncing upon you from an always unexpected direction. Dick scorned to wear a veil in any weather, and her hair blew all about and into her eyes, and as one of her hands was occupied with her muff and her purse, and the other with keeping her skirts out of the slush, she would pause and wait for the wind to blow the refractory lock out of the way again. Then she would laugh, for it was all part of the lark to Dick, and start on.

In one of these pauses she saw a little imp-faced newsboy looking up at her with a grin so infectious that she smiled back at him. The effect of that smile upon the boy was immediate; he sprang forward, collided with one passer-by, then with another, and seemed to carrom from him to a position directly in front of Dick.

“Did ye want a piper, miss?” he gasped. He was still grinning.

“Yes,” laughed Dick, and heedless of the slush she let go her skirt and drew the purse from her muff.

“This is jolly, isn’t it?” she said, fishing a dime from her purse and handing it to him. “Oh, I haven’t any place to carry a paper. Never mind. I’ll get it from you some other time. Merry Christmas,” and with a bright nod she was gone.

They had stood—Dick and the newsboy—in the strong light from a shop window, and the little scene may have been noted by a dozen persons in the crowd that had flowed by them. But one man who had come up from the direction in which Dick was going, a big man, muffled to the eye-glasses in an ulster, had seemed particularly interested. Dick’s back was toward him as he passed,—she had turned to the window in order to see into her purse,—but there was something familiar about the graceful line of her slight figure, and he looked at her closely, as one who thinks he recognizes but cannot be sure, and when he was a few yards by he looked again. This time he saw her face just as she nodded farewell to the newsboy, and in an instant he had turned about and was off in pursuit; but when he came up to where the little urchin was still standing, he stopped, fumbled in his outer pockets, drew out a quarter of a dollar, and held it out to him. “Here you are, boy,” he said, and hurried after Dick, who was now half a square away.

When only a few steps behind he called:—

“Dick! Dick! What a pace you’ve got! Wait a bit.”

She turned, recognizing his voice; as he came alongside, he added:—

“You never were easy to catch, but you seem to be getting worse in that respect. Beast of a night, isn’t it?”

It was dark, and in the additional protection of her high fur collar Dick permitted herself to smile; but she commented only on the last part of his remark. The wrestle with the gale had put her out of breath, and she spoke in gasps.

“Oh, yes—but it’s a good beast. Like a big overgrown—Newfoundland puppy.”

He fell in step with her, and they walked on more slowly in silence; for they were good enough friends for that. At length she said,—

“I thought you were going home to spend Christmas.”

“I did expect to, but I couldn’t.”

Her tone was colder when she spoke. “It’s too bad that you were detained.”

“Detained!” he exclaimed. “You know what I meant, Dick. When mother invited you to spend the holidays with us, and I thought from what you said that you would, why I expected to go, too. But as long as you stay here, why I shall, that’s all: you don’t play fair, Dick.”

“That spoils everything,” she said quietly. Then after a moment, “No, it doesn’t either. You shan’t make me cross on Christmas Eve, whatever you say. Only, sometimes you make it rather hard to play fair.”

He answered quickly: “You’re quite right about that. I suppose I do, and pretty often. How do you put up with me at all, Dick?”

She laughed. “Oh, I manage it rather easily. You’re nearly always good. Just now, for instance, walking away out here with me. You’ll come in to dinner with us, won’t you?”

“I think I’d better not. Mr. Bagsbury and I have had about all we can stand of each other for one week. We’re getting used to each other by degrees. I wonder if I irritate him as much as he does me. Do you really like him, Dick?”

“Yes,” she said reflectively, “I really like him very much. But I don’t wonder that you don’t get on together. The only thing either of you sees in the other is the thing he particularly hates.” She laughed softly. “But rolled together you’d be simply immense.”

“Call it three hundred and sixty pounds,” he said. “Yes, that’s big; as big as Melville Sponley.”

“As big as Mr. Sponley thinks he is,” she rejoined. “And that’s a very different thing. I hate that man. I wouldn’t trust him behind a—a ladder!”

They had reached the Bagsburys’ house, and Dick held out her hand to him. “Good night,” she said. “I wish you were coming in. Thank you for walking home with me.”

But Jack Dorlin hesitated. “I wish you would tell me, Dick, whether you mean to settle down here to live with the Bagsburys, or whether this is just a visit. If I camp down here near by, and get my piano and my books, and the rest of my truck comfortably set up just before you pack your things and flit away, it’ll leave me feeling rather silly.”

She laughed, “Why, they want me to stay, and I think I will. I think I’ll try rolling you and Uncle John together. Good night.” She let herself into the house with a latch-key and hurried upstairs to her room; but before she could reach it, she was intercepted in the upper hall by her aunt.

“Dick!” she exclaimed, “where have you been? I was beginning to be dreadfully worried about you.”

For reply, Dick turned so that the light from the chandelier shone full in her face. “Look at me,” she commanded. “Look at me closely, and see if you think there is any good in worrying over a great—healthy—animal—like me.”

She shook her head at every pause, and the little drops of melted snow that beaded her tumbled hair came rolling down her face; and then, slowly, she smiled.

When Dick smiled, even on others of her sex, that put an end to argument. Alice Bagsbury laughed a little, patted her arm affectionately, and said: “Well, you’re awfully wet, anyway, so run along and put on some dry things. And John is home, and we’re going to have dinner right away, so you’ll have to hurry.”

“I’ll be down,” said Dick, pausing as if for an exact calculation, “in—eight minutes. Will that do?”

Her aunt nodded and laughed again, and went downstairs, while Dick, laying her watch on her dressing table, prepared to justify her arithmetic.

It was a sort of miracle that Dick Haselridge was not spoiled. Her mother, John Bagsbury’s sister Martha, remembering her own dismal childhood, had gone far in the other direction, and Dick had never known enough repression or discipline at home to be worth mentioning. Dick’s real name, let it be said, was her mother’s, Martha, but as her two first boon companions had borne the names Thomas and Henry, her father, so Dick said, had declared that it was too bad to spoil the combination just because she happened to be a girl, so almost from her babyhood she was known as Dick. It was not wonderful that Dick’s father and mother allowed her to do about as she pleased, for her manner made it hard to deny her anything. Long before she was ten years old, she had made the discovery that anybody, friend or stranger, was very likely to do what she wanted him to.

That was a dangerous bit of knowledge for a child to have, and it might have been disastrous to Dick had there not been strong counteracting influences at work. Her father died when she was but twelve years old, and thereby it came about that for the first time in her merry little life Dick tasted the sorrows and the joys of responsibility. Her mother, in the few years of life that were left her, never entirely recovered, so Dick stayed at home to keep her cheerful, and avert the little worries that came to disturb her.

Dick was just seventeen when her mother died, and she found herself without a home and without a single intimate friend. For a time she was bewildered by her grief, but her courage and her indomitable buoyancy asserted themselves, and she took the tiller of her life in hand, to steer as good a course as she could without the advice or assistance of anybody.

Ever since the death of Victor Haselridge, John Bagsbury had kept a sort of track of his sister, and when she died, he wrote Dick a letter, asking her to come and live with him and Alice; but Dick had determined, first of all, to go to college, so she declined the invitation. She had not been what one would call a studious child, but she was keenly interested in things, and she learned easily, and she had contrived in one way or another to pick up enough information to satisfy the entrance requirement of the college she had chosen. It was a wise decision, for in college she was busy, she was popular, and that, as it did not turn her head, was good for her, and best of all, she found a few intimate friends.

The first of these was Edith Dorlin: they were fast friends before the fall term was well begun, and as a result Dick went home with her to spend the Thanksgiving recess. In those few days Mrs. Dorlin fell quite in love with her, as did also Edith’s brother Jack, who was four years older than his sister and in his junior year at college. The Dorlins made what was almost a home for her during her four college years, and as the time for graduation grew near, Edith and her mother both besought Dick to make her home with them permanently. Jack also asked her to come, but his invitation included marrying him, and Dick, though she was really very fond of him, did not love him in the least, so in spite of their combined entreaties she had announced her intention of going abroad for a year or two; whereupon Jack, averring that he was not cut out for a lawyer, and that he was tired of getting his essays on things in general back from the magazines, decided that he ought to do something with his music and began planning to go to Berlin to study.

But the Bagsburys had not entirely lost sight of Dick, and on her commencement day John appeared and repeated his invitation that she come and live with them, or at least make them a long visit. Somewhat to Dick’s surprise she accepted; partly because the idea of having any sort of a home appealed to her, and partly because, in spite of her prejudice against him, she liked John, with his strong, alert way, and his bluntness, and his cautious keeping within the fact; and then—this was the strongest reason of all—his mouth and something in the inflection of his voice reminded her of her mother.

Jack Dorlin’s disgust when he heard of Dick’s decision quite outran his power of expression.

“Don’t you think yourself that it’s mildly insane?” he asked her.

“I’m not going there to live,” said Dick; “at least, I don’t know that I am. Not unless they like me awfully well.”

“But just try to think a minute,” he went on, trying hard to preserve an argumentative manner; “here are we who have known you all your life—”

She smiled, and he exclaimed impatiently.

“Oh, don’t be so literal! I have known you—always, and can’t you—”

He broke off short. Then without giving her time to say the words that were on her lips, he added quickly:—

“I know, Dick. I know. Don’t tell me again. I didn’t mean to speak that way; it got away from me. But I can’t see the sense of your going away off to live with some people you’ve never seen. Mother and Edith and I have known you four years, and we do like you awfully well; there’s no ‘unless’ about it.”

“Don’t try to argue any more, Jack,” she said. “I’m going to visit the Bagsburys. I don’t know how long I’ll stay; it may be a month, and it may be a year, and I may find a home there. But I shall miss you all dreadfully, and you must write me lots of letters. Tell me all about your life in Berlin, and how your music is going—and everything.”

“I rather doubt my getting to Berlin this year,” he said cautiously.

He would tell her nothing more definite, but she was not really surprised when, before she had been a week with the Bagsburys, he came to call on her. He was as unconcerned about it as though he had lived all his life just around the corner.

He was so jolly and companionable, so much the old comrade and so little the despairing lover that, try as she might, Dick could not be sorry that he was there. He would tell her nothing about his plans save that he meant to stay around for a while. He said he found he could think better when he was within a mile of where she lived, and no entreaties could drive him away.

That was in July, and now, at Christmas, the situation was unchanged. With any other man it would have been intolerable, but he was different. Save on rare occasions, he was always just as on that first evening, the same lazy, amused, round-faced, good-hearted Jack. And she was forced to admit to herself that she was glad he had persisted in disobeying her.

He was easily the best friend she had. To no one else could she show her thoughts just as they came, without stopping first to look at them and see if they held together. With no one else did she feel beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. He was—oh, he was the best of good comrades.

Ah, Dick! your eight minutes have slipped away and another eight, and still you are not dressed for dinner.