The banker and the bear

Dick was, indeed, somewhat bewildered and disappointed. Had the events of Christmas Eve and the few following days occurred during the first month of her stay with the Bagsburys, she would have made no attempt to look beneath the surface, but would have packed her trunks and fled out of that grimy atmosphere with the least possible delay; and poor Jack Dorlin would have had to pull up his stakes and follow, who knows whither. But in the six months she had developed an affection for both John and Alice. She could not have told you why. They were totally different from her other friends. But our affections are based on no analysis. We like or love, not at all because we see in this person or that a certain combination of qualities, no more than we like beefsteak because it contains carbon and hydrogen and other uninviting elements in a fixed proportion. Perhaps Dick liked John and Alice because they had become so fond of her, because they gave her their confidences, or because she had brought a sweeter, fresher influence into their lives than either had known before, like a breath of country air in a smoky factory.

She thought a good deal in the course of the first weeks following old Bagsbury’s death and the reading of the will. She could not forget the scene she had witnessed, and in which she had finally taken a part, in the dingy little private office at the bank. She felt keenly the pathos of the old man’s death there, over the desk which held his whole world; his head among the papers which had received all the affection that his withered soul could give. But it was not the old man’s death that had made her cry that night as she drove home alone in the jolting carriage; it was the look she had seen in the son’s face as he stood there, his back to the still figure on the sofa, and his eyes fastened greedily on those same papers. In this sordid presence even death seemed to lose its dignity. Yes, Dick had cried all the way home, simply with an uncontrollable disgust.

And afterward, so soon afterward, she had seen his father’s will become for John simply a legal document, which stood in his way, which was to be evaded, if possible, because evasion was swifter and surer than direct attack. For accomplishing his purpose no tool seemed too small, no way too devious. His disappointment over the will was not at all because it showed that he had not gained his father’s confidence, but simply because it postponed or perhaps made impossible his getting control of his father’s fortune.

Dick knew how this would have affected her six months before. She was puzzled and a little ashamed to find herself justifying it now, and she feared that her friendship for John was blinding her.

None the less it came about that Dick entered enthusiastically into the fight for the control of the stock. Hers was a spectator’s part, and night after night, when around the big desk in the library sat John and Robins and Sponley, and sometimes old Dawson, who had retired from business, but whom John continued to regard as a sort of commercial godfather; when the cigar smoke eddied thick about the reading lamp, she would sit in the easy-chair in the darkest corner of the room, listening to the telegraphic sentences which were shot back and forth.

Then there were the evenings, and these too were frequent, when Jack Dorlin would come over and listen with what grace he could to Dick’s account of the progress of the struggle. It did not interest him particularly; but as Dick would not be induced to talk of anything else, he had to make the best of it.

But one night his self-control gave way. Dick had been telling him, with great gusto, how more and more of the outside stock was either coming under John’s control or was being promised to his support, and how old Mr. Moffat had already quarrelled violently with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Cartwright, and that he was coming round to John’s side in a most satisfactory manner. She narrated it, as she did nearly everything, with just the lightest possible stress on the humorous aspect of it; but Jack sat through it all with unshaken solemnity.

“I don’t see that it’s particularly funny,” he said at last.

Dick flushed quickly, glanced at him and then back to the fire. But he was not looking at her, and after a little pause he went on:—

“It seems to me pretty small business, all round. It’s rather different from anything I’ve ever known you to be interested in before. I can’t quite understand your enthusiasm over it.”

“No,” said Dick, “I don’t suppose you can.”

Jack was warming to his subject, and he misread her words into an acknowledgment that he was right.

“I’ve known you longer than John Bagsbury has,” he went on, “and I think that I’ve as good a claim to your friendship; but I’d like to know what you’d think of me if I should do a trick like that,—go round and deliberately stir up a row so that I could profit by it.”

“I should think you were a cad,” she said calmly, “and I should ask you not to call here in the future.”

“I should like to be able to see what makes the difference.”

“Why, this is the difference,” Dick answered slowly; “John Bagsbury is the sort of man that does things; and you’re—well, you’d rather watch other people do them.”

She paused and glanced at his face; then with a smile she went on:—

“It’s like a football game. If you’re standing in the side lines, you aren’t allowed to punch people’s heads, or kick shins, but if you’re running with the ball, why nobody minds if you forget to be polite.”

“That’s a bit rough,” he said musingly, “but I’m not sure that you’re not right—and that I’m not just about as useless as that.”

“I didn’t say that,” she retorted, “and I don’t mean it. It takes both sorts of people, of course, and I like you a great deal better than I do John Bagsbury; but I find there’s rather more to life than I could see when I first came here; and when a man’s strong, as he is, and ambitious, and has a sort of courage that’s more than just the love of a fight, and when he’s honest with himself and lives up to what he knows, why, I admire him and I can forgive him if he has some callous spots. And I don’t think that people who’ve never had his ambitions or temptations or anything can afford to look down on him.”

When she stopped she was breathing quickly, and her eyes were unusually bright. There was a long silence, and then she added, with a little laugh,—

“I never knew before that I could make a speech.”

He said nothing, and after a moment she glanced at him almost shyly, to discover if she had offended him. He did not look up, but kept his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the fire, so, secure in his preoccupation, she watched his face intently. Their comradeship had, for years, held itself to be above the necessity of conversation; but to-night, as the silence deepened and endured, it brought to Dick a message it had not borne before.

At length he spoke, “That’s your ultimatum, is it, Dick?”

There was something in his voice she had never heard before, and now she knew that ever since one evening long ago she had been waiting to hear it. Her heart leaped, and a wave of glad color came into her face, but she answered very quietly,—

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

For a little while he sat there looking at the fire, then he rose, and, standing beside her chair, let his hand rest lightly on her shoulder.

“Good night, Dick,” he said simply.

Next evening Robins and Bessel and Sponley came before John had fairly finished his dinner, and in the library the smoke was thicker and the talk choppier than ever before, and Dick, in her dark corner, listened more intently. The time for preparation was growing short; the decisive day was drawing very near. It could easily be seen now that the voting at the stockholders’ meeting would be close, horribly close, provided always that the trustees of John Bagsbury’s stock could not agree as to how it should be voted.

Leaving that out of the question, the fortunes of the day hung upon a large block of stock, which, according to the secretary’s book, was the property of Jervis Curtin. How he meant to vote it, how he could be persuaded to vote it for John’s faction, was the question which the four allies were met to discuss this evening.

“Can’t understand where he got money enough to buy a big chunk like that,” said Robins.

“Queer thing,” Sponley answered. “Must have made some strike we don’t know about. Anyhow, it seems he’s got it, and the Lord only knows how he means to vote it. I’ve been talking to him till I’m tired, but I can’t make him commit himself.”

“Know any reason—any personal reason—why he’s holding back?” asked Bessel.

Sponley shook his head. “Never met him before this business came up,” he answered.

Melville Sponley was playing badly. He was a strong believer in the efficacy of truth, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and when forced to deviate from the truth he always tried to make the deviation as narrow as possible. But just this once, to adopt fencer’s parlance, he parried wide; he told more of a lie than was necessary, and by one of those hazards which are not astonishing only because they occur so frequently, by the veriest fluke in the world, Dick Haselridge knew he had lied. This is how it happened. A day or two before, Dick had gone to a song recital, and as the programme proved unexpectedly short, she found when she came out that the Bagsbury carriage had not yet come. While she was debating whether to wait for it or to try her fortunes in the elevated, Mrs. Jervis Curtin had offered to take her home. Dick had met her just once and had not liked her, but the rain was pouring, and it was so much easier to accept than to decline that she did the former. On the way home Mrs. Curtin asked Dick to come home with her first and have a cup of tea, and Dick, who had been thinking hard about something else, assented before she thought.

They had not been three minutes in the little reception room before they heard footsteps and voices in the hall. The portière was thick, but Dick heard first a high voice, which she did not know, and then a gruffer one, which she seemed to recognize. As she glanced toward the portière, Mrs. Curtin said,—

“That must be Mr. Sponley with Mr. Curtin.”

Mrs. Curtin had not the smallest interest in Melville Sponley, but something must serve for conversation until the kettle could be got to boil, and he made the best material at hand, so she talked about him: how a few months ago he had come to see Mr. Curtin a number of times; how once he had brought Mrs. Sponley to call on them. She told Dick what she thought of them, and what her friends thought of them and a great deal more, which bored Dick and herself also exceedingly, so that both of them were very much relieved when it was possible for Dick to take her leave.

But now!

Sponley had never thought Dick worth taking into account. He believed her apparent interest in the fight for the bank to be nothing more than a pose. He had met many of those women who will affect an interest in anything so long as it is out of what used to be considered “woman’s sphere,” and he took it for granted that Dick was doing the same thing. So though his eyes were everywhere else, they never fell on Dick. Had he looked at her now, he would have seen that she knew he had lied.

She began to try to think out the meaning of it, but checked herself, for she must follow the discussion.

“He’s holding out for something, that’s all there is to it,” said Robins. “What do you suppose he wants?—Board of Directors?”

“He can’t have that, if he does want it,” said John. “We couldn’t get him in if we wanted to try, and he’s not the right sort, any way.”

“Wonder how something with a salary to it would suit him,” Sponley said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it would have to be too near the top, either.”

“Assistant cashier?” asked John.

Sponley nodded. “Guess we could land him with that,” he said.

John smiled rather ruefully. “We’ve got to have him, so I suppose we’ll have to pay the price. It’ll simply mean putting in a high-priced man for discount clerk to do his work.”

Those were busy days, for while John was bringing every available resource into line for the approaching struggle, Alice and Dick were superintending the rehabilitation of the gloomy old house where John had spent his boyhood, and which was now to be their home. It would be unfair not to mention Jack Dorlin in this connection, for his taste, his energy, when he chose to exert it, and his unlimited leisure made him a most valuable ally. The three spent about half their days in the big house, consulting, arguing the advisability of this change or that, arranging and rearranging, until even Dick admitted she was tired.

But she found time to tell Jack all she knew about the fight for the bank, and to her surprise she found that her enthusiasm had proved contagious, for Jack was infected with as great an eagerness over the result as she herself.

Melville Sponley had the lion’s share of their discussions, but they could not make out the purpose of his deceit. They were agreed that what they knew was too indefinite to speak to John about, at least as yet.

“And anyway,” Jack observed, “Sponley isn’t an out-and-out villain.”

“All the same,” said Dick, “I wish we could find out what his purpose was in saying he didn’t know Mr. Curtin.” Then she added, laughing, “That does sound detectivish, doesn’t it? We might set a detective to following Mr. Curtin.”

“Yes,” he answered; “say we do.”

The days of preparation and struggle came to an end at last, and John won. His father’s stock was not voted, and of the Board of Directors elected by the outside stock only two were likely to attempt to oppose his policy, while the other four were men he could count on to help him. He was sorry he had been forced to pledge to Curtin the position of assistant cashier; but he comforted himself with the reflection that the concession had been well worth the price.

He had arrived, not at the goal, but rather, after years of waiting, at what he regarded as the starting line. The situation was very different from what he had been looking forward to. His hold on the presidency was so insecure that one of a dozen accidents might dislodge him; but he was in no humor for complaining. He had a chance, and that was all John Bagsbury needed.

When he came home, bearing the good news, even Alice was excited, and Dick could scarcely contain herself. Jack came over while they were still at dinner, and hearing his voice in the hall, she rushed from the table to welcome him.

“Well, we’ve won,” they cried simultaneously. Then they laughed and shook hands, both hands, and then for a second there seemed to be nothing more to say.

Jack broke the silence. “When we get fairly settled, you must come down to see us.”

“We! Us!” she exclaimed. “Jack! what do you mean?”

“Why,” he said, “I asked Mr. Bagsbury for a job, and he has promised me one. I believe it is in what they call the kindergarten.”

She had been looking at him in doubt as to whether or not he was making game of her; but now she saw that he was telling the truth, and she interrupted.

“Jack! Jack!” she cried. Then with a little laugh she began again. “Oh, you absurd—” Again she stopped and said composedly:—

“We’ve not finished dinner yet. Will you come into the dining room to wait, or would you rather go into the library where you can smoke?”

Jack went into the library and lighted a cigar very deliberately. Then he remarked with conviction,—

“If she’d looked that way for another second, I’d have kissed her.”