Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “There’s a devilish row on down-town,” observed Delancy, blinking, as an unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes.

  “What kind of a row?” asked Duane.

  “Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and microscopical assets.”

  Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was only vaguely impressed.

  “Is that rather a bad thing?” he inquired.

  “Well — I don’t know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three banks fell down in Brooklyn, too.”

  “What banks?”

  Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie were any wiser.

  “The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, also,” observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal responsibility for these financial flip-flaps.

  Rosalie laughed: “This is pleasant information for a rainy day,” she said. “Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?”

  “Yes, to-day,” he said innocently; “she is leaving Lenox this morning for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe.”

  Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: “Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy.”

  “Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to be a jolly affair.”

  “Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief,” observed young Grandcourt drily.

  They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair.

  The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and veil; the two men standing glanced at one another:

  “I suppose you know,” said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, “that Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated.”

  “I heard so yesterday,” said Duane coolly.

  The other grew redder: “I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour ago.” He hesitated, then frankly awkward: “I say, Mallett, I’m a sort of an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about with Mrs. Dysart — under the circumstances?”

  “Why — no!” said Duane. “Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. Only — perhaps it’s fairer to her if you don’t do it too often — I mean it’s better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What’s taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs.”

  “I suppose so. I don’t read it myself, but it makes game of my mother and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and planning a suit for damages once a week. You’re right; most people are afraid of it. Do you think it’s all right for me to motor back with Mrs. Dysart?”

  “Are you afraid?” asked Duane, smiling.

  “Only on her account,” said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling rose in Duane’s heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when they laughed at him.

  “Are you driving?” asked Duane.

  “Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you suppose there’ll be?”

  “Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?”

  “Only that — it’s too bad. I’ve known them so long; I’m friendly with both. Jack is a curious fellow. There’s much of good in him, Mallett, although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a — I don’t mean this for criticism — but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading people to consider him overbearing.

  “I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, myself — being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not anything remarkable.

  “But, somehow” — he looked earnestly at Duane— “I set a very great value on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn’t very easily break one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so particular about his wife.”

  Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so naïvely confessed.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Duane; “I think you’re the best sort of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your friendship. But the town’s full of ‘em, Grandcourt,” he added with a smile.

  “I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett — may I ask you something more?... I don’t like to pester you with questions — —”

  “Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut man.”

  Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue:

  “That’s very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this Greensleeve & Co.’s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns.”

  “Certainly,” said Duane, surprised; “what about them? They acted for Dysart at one time, didn’t they?”

  “They do now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am. I didn’t want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the afternoon papers have it. I don’t know why they take such a malicious pleasure in harrying Dysart — unless on account of his connections with that Yo Espero crowd — what’s their names? — Skelton! Oh, yes, James Skelton — and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos Flack — Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down on his own brokers and has done everybody’s dirty work ever since. How on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?”

  Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart.

  Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee motor-coat and hat.

  “Do come back with us, Duane,” she said. “There’s a rumble and we’ll get the mud off you with a hose.”

  “I’d like to run down sometimes if you’ll let me,” he said, shaking hands.

  So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back on his hands.

  That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his chair.

  And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father’s cigar and then his own.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years because he felt it was the time to do it.

  His father slowly turned his head and looked at him — seemed to study the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young man — his only son — as though searching for some support in the youthful strength he gazed upon.

  He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perf
ectly steady:

  “Matters are not going very well, my boy.”

  “What matters, father?”

  “Down-town.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only crawl into your shell and lie still.”

  “Yes.”

  After a silence:

  “Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?”

  “There are — some.”

  “You are not involved seriously?”

  His father made an effort: “I think not, Duane.”

  “Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I’ve deposited what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier.”

  “That is — very kind of you, my son. I may — find use for it — for a short time. Would you take my note?”

  Duane laughed. He went on presently: “I wrote Naïda the other day. She has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need it.”

  His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken hands worked on the arms of his chair.

  “See here, father,” said the young fellow; “don’t let this thing bother you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens — which it won’t — but suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash.

  “That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because Naïda and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits us, I can take care of our bunch. It’s in me to do it. I suppose you don’t think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, after all, that’s the main thing.”

  His father said nothing.

  “Of course,” laughed Duane, “I don’t for a moment suppose that anything like that is on the cards. I don’t know what your fortune is, but judging from your generosity to Naïda and me I fancy it’s too solid to worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists,” he added, “is that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of the case.”

  His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying:

  “As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, I’m not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that Dysart’s brokers failed to-day.”

  “So I heard,” said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his chair. “I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend — —”

  The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning the Yo Espero district.

  Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited.

  His father did not return. Later a servant came:

  “Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be undisturbed, as he is very tired.”

  CHAPTER XV. DYSART

  The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote that Duane’s incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the name Yo Espero haunted his dreams.

  But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in his confused imagination. Dysart’s name, too, figured in it. And, somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining engineer’s reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that Guy Wilton had been called into consultation.

  Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero.

  His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to a healthier colour.

  “You know,” said Duane, “you’ve simply got to get out of town for a while. It’s all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing.”

  “I may go West for a few weeks,” said his father absently.

  “Are you going down-town?”

  “No.... And, Duane, if you don’t mind letting me have the house to myself this morning — —”

  He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone.

  “Of course not,” said Duane heartily. “I’m off to the studio — —”

  “I don’t mean to throw you out,” murmured his father with a painful attempt to smile, “but there’s a stenographer coming from my office and several — business acquaintances.”

  The young fellow rose, patted his father’s shoulder lightly:

  “What is really of any importance,” he said, “is that you keep your health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I can do anything in the world for you, tell me.”

  His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a strange dumb look; and so they parted.

  On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples.

  “Ah,” observed Wilton, “early bird and worm, I suppose? Don’t try to bolt me, Duane; I’m full of tough and undigested — er — problems, myself. Besides, I’m fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening politely to a man you wanted to assault?”

  Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the packet of papers under Wilton’s arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a flash to Wilton’s face.

  The latter said: “I want to write a book entitled ‘Gentleman I Have Kicked.’ Of course I’ve only kicked ’em mentally; but my! what a list I have! — all sorts, all nations — from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel! — all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I’ve just used my foot on another social favorite — —”

  “Dysart!” said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton’s pardon.

  “You’ve sure got a disconcerting way with you,” admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance.

  “It was rotten bad taste in me — —”

  Wilton grinned with a wry face: “Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days. Besides, I’m on to your trail, young man” — tapping the bundle under his arm— “your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to — a rather embarrassing conclusion.”

  Duane’s serious face fell:

  “My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up to see him now?”

  Wilton hesitated: “I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you know about — anything?”

  “Nothing,” he said without humour; “I’m beginning to worry over my father’s health.... Guy, don’t tell me anything that my father’s son ought not to know; but is there som
ething I should know and don’t? — anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?”

  Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy.

  “I — don’t — know,” he said slowly. “I’m going to see your father now. If there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don’t you?”

  “Yes. But he won’t. Guy, I don’t care a damn about anything except his health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won’t tell me, but don’t you think I ought to know?”

  “You ask too hard a question for me to answer.”

  “Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack Dysart’s schemes?”

  “I — had better not answer, Duane.”

  “You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs and yours.”

  “Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I’ve got to hustle. Good-bye.”

  He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and presently rattled off up-town.

  In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at a bronze grille.

  The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the tiny elevator.

  There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to him.

  Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into the room wearing hat and gloves.