The Banker and the Bear
Page 21
The room pleased her. It was bright and dainty, there was no unrestful decoration about it. It reminded her somehow of Dick. She asked for Miss Haselridge a number of times that morning, and was disappointed each time that they said she had not yet come home. She would have liked to have Dick about. When Alice Bagsbury tiptoed into the room, she generally pretended to be asleep, for Alice’s well- meant ministrations and inquiries were irritating.
A little after four o’clock, she heard a step approaching her door, along the hall. It was a quiet tread, but the boards of the old floor creaked under it. For years she had known it better than any other, and in all those years it had never been unwelcome. But now it brought her back instantly to herself ; she was again the broken, quivering Harriet she had looked at so impersonally a little while ago. With a sudden impulse of fear she turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes. She knew now what she had been waiting for.
The door opened almost silently ; then after a moment’s pause Melville Sponley walked softly across the room and sat down upon the bed close beside her. But not until she felt his hand upon her forehead did she dare open her eyes and look at him.
“ How is it going ? “ she asked, preventing the question that was on his lips. “ I’ve waited all day to find out.”
“ Pretty well.”
“No, tell me everything. I’m not afraid of that.”
“ I don’t believe you are. I don’t believe you’re afraid of anything. But it isn’t easy to tell. They’ve beaten us, Harriet. They closed me out just before noon. We’re broke.”
She turned quickly away and buried her face in the pillow.
“I thought I should never have to tell you anything like that,” he went on, speaking slowly, for the words came hard. “ I didn’t think any- body could beat me.”
He paused and looked at her anxiously ; the effect of his wordsalarmed him a little. “ I know I ought not to be talking to you about it now, but “
“ It isn’t that,” she interrupted quickly. “Please don’t think it’s that. It’s something I’ve got to tell you that frightens me.”
His face told her that her words had puzzled him, but he only waited for her to go on. For a long time she did not speak. Courageous as she was, she could hardly force the words to her lips, for all her happiness hung on the way he should receive them.
“ This is it,” she said monotonously : “ I came here that night to tell John that there was going to be a run on his bank. So you see it was I who beat you. I did it because “
“So that is what worried you ! “ he exclaimed, catching both her hands in his. “ Why, that didn’t beat me. I knew you’d told him ; he said so. I’ve been proud of you ever since for that. It didn’t occur to me to do it till later ; but when it did, I came around and warned him myself. Then he said you’d already told him.”
The tears brimmed from her eyes and mois- tened her hot cheeks. “ Don’t tell me any more. It doesn’t matter. I’m happier than I thought I ever could be again.”
“ So you were frightened because “
“ Don’t,” she pleaded ; “ let’s not talk about it at all. Let’s agree never to speak at all about these days. It’s all over, and this was the last.”
“ Yes,” he said slowly ; “ we agreed that this was to be the last.”
She gazed into his face, eagerly at first, but soon the brightness died out of her eyes ; then she looked away, out through the dainty white curtain that hung before the window, at a patch of blue sky.
“ I wasn’t thinking of that,” she said, with a smile on her lips. “ Of course you can’t stop after a defeat. I’d forgotten that it was a defeat. But you want to win again.”
“ That makes me feel better. I hoped you’d feel that way about it. I know I can win, and I’d like to. And it’ll only be one more.”
“ Only one more,” she echoed softly. Then she roused herself and said energetically : “ I wish you’d get the carriage and take me home. I’m strong enough to go, really, and I want to get back there.”
Jack Dorlin has always accounted it a miracle of self-control that he stayed at the bank that day until he had finished up his day’s work. But in spite of Dick’s face, with its lurking dimple, that kept coming between him and his remittance ledgers, and her voice that was always in his ears, he did it. It will go without saying that when the last of the work was done, a little before five in the afternoon, that he made record-breaking speed straight to John Bagsbury’s house. When he came near it, he was struck with a sudden incredulity concerning the astounding events of that morning. It was absurd to think that they had really happened. With true lover’s insanity he took council with himself that he would assume nothing at all un- less Dick’s behavior should give him the warrant.
But when he came up the steps, and she opened the door for him
There is nothing at all original about it, though they would dispute that statement vigor- ously, nothing that does not happen too many times to be worth telling, nothing that some persons do not know already, and others could not understand if it were told, about what they said and what they left unsaid as they lingered in that dark old hall.
But when he started to open the door into the library, she checked him, saying in a whisper that John was there.
“Well,” said this lion-hearted lover, “let’s go in and tell him.”
She protested for a little, but finally yielded, and together they entered the library. They thought that after what he had seen that morn- ing, he would understand, and certainly their faces as John looked at them should have told the story to any average intelligence. But John had once before narrowly escaped a disastrous blunder through too confidently judging from appearances, and experience had made him cautious.
So he did nothing to meet them halfway, and Jack, whose valor seemed to have remained out in the dark hall, had to stammer out the news a word at a time until the last.
When John fairly understood, his confusion exceeded that of Jack Dorlin. He glanced furtively at the hall door as though meditating flight. When he saw, however, that nothing happened, he never could be induced to tell what he had expected that they would do, he sat down again. But as soon as possible he changed the subject of conversation, evidently still regarding it as dangerous.
“We’ve had quite a day of it,” he said, and they both assented cordially.
“ It seems to me that a literary fellow like you, Dorlin, might write up that time-lock busi- ness into a pretty good story.”
Jack said yes again, but this time more vaguely. “ Of course,” the Banker hastened to add, “you’d have to fix it up a little. You could have them blow the vault open with dynamite and kill the villain.”
Dick’s hand stole into a larger one that had hidden itself under the fold of her skirt. “ Come and play for me, Jack, until dinner- time,” she said; then turning to the Banker, she added, “ Don’t you feel like some music, too?”
But he understood. “No no run along,” he said, and laughing they slipped away and left him alone in the library.
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