Treasured Brides Collection (33 page)

He paused suddenly and looked up, worried by the stony silence with which Chris was receiving his offer.

Chris was sitting there with his haughtiest manner, his head thrown up, his eyes angry, looking at his friend as if he had suddenly become an alien enemy.

Walt began to fidget around uneasily. He knew that look on Chris’s face but had never happened to have it turned on him before. He hastened to speak in quite a different tone.

“Why, what’s the matter, old man? You don’t understand. I’m offering you a chance to finish your college course. I’ve come down on purpose. The frat sent me. They’re back of me, and they’ll be back of you. And the college wants you.”

“Sorry!” said Chris stiffly. “It’s quite impossible.”

“But look here, Chris,” said Walt, getting nervous. He had thought this thing was going to be put through so easily. “You don’t understand. It won’t cost you a cent. It’s a free gift. The college feels you’re worth it to them! They haven’t a man who can come up to you in athletics, and they really need you.”

“That’s gratifying, I’m sure,” said Chris, assuming his most grown-up manner and shutting his lips with that kind of finality that made his former playmate remember other occasions and understand that this was going to be a real hand-to-hand battle.

He settled down to argue. He still had several good reasons why Chris should come back with him today to college.

“Why, I’ve had this ready to propose for a week, but I wouldn’t do it until your father was out of danger,” he said, in a conciliatory tone that helped a lot toward soothing Chris’s wounded pride.

“My father isn’t entirely out of danger yet,” said Chris, in a serious tone. “He’s better, but we have to take very great care of him.”

“Oh, certainly! Of course!” said the other young man, a trifle impatiently. “But a nurse can do that! He would get well twice as quick if he knew you were back in college getting all that’s coming to you. Why, I’ve had my sister on the quiet watching the bulletins from the doctor, and she wired me the minute he said your father was better.”

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” said Chris, and suddenly knew he was right. “It will be a long time before my father is well, and I’m needed right here. I have responsibilities. And you’re mistaken about Dad. I’m just sure now, under the existing circumstances, that Dad would expect me to stand by.”

But Walter Gillespie did not give up. He argued it this way and that. It presently appeared that another member of the fraternity had come down with him. An alumnus was to be there to lunch, and Chris had it all to go over again.

But Chris did not weaken. As the argument went on, he only grew stronger in the knowledge of what he had to do. A vision of that angry mob in front of the bank the day he stood by his father and promised to see that his covenant with the people was made good came vividly to his mind, and convinced him that unquestionably his place was here at home, helping his father to make good, cheering and helping his mother.

Later, when he was by himself, all the tempting things they offered would come back to him and stab him to the heart with longing to go. For before they were done with him, the jobs they had secured for him, the fourth-story dormitory, and the condescension were scrapped, and the beautiful suite of rooms with Walt for roommate was even offered free, with the promise to put Dick Bradford elsewhere. There was satisfaction, of course, in the thought that they wanted him so badly. It healed his wounded pride when the dignified alumnus even descended his patronage and humbled himself to tell Chris he was the only man who could come in at this time and tide the fraternity over a certain crisis through which it was passing.

But when it was all over, Chris could only say it was impossible, that he had other obligations that came first.

Of course, on the way home that afternoon, having seen Walt and the alumnus on the two-fifty train, he suffered a reaction and began to think perhaps he had been a fool to refuse such an offer. Perhaps his father would blame him for taking things in his own hands this way. Yet there remained, like a wall of adamant, back in his mind, the knowledge that he should stay and work and help to pay back his father’s debt, if possible. At least help him in his present need.

A deep gloom settled down upon him as he turned his steps toward home. Here was he, with the way open to go back and get his last college year, which any fool would tell him he needed before he would be worth much in the business world, and yet the way so effectually blocked by honor that the offer might as well never have come, save for the satisfaction of knowing how the college people felt toward him.

But when he entered the house and found that his father’s condition had not been quite so good that day, he forgot all about college again as the mantle of anxiety returned upon his weary, young shoulders.

T
here came a morning when the doctor came out of the sickroom with a look of bright triumph on his face.

“Well, sir,” he said to Chris, as he got himself into his fall overcoat and took up his hat, “your father’s going to get well. I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure but there might be a setback. He’s come through his worst danger now. The lung is all cleared up, and he’s on the way to health again. From now on you won’t need to keep quite so still when you walk through the hall, and in a few days he’ll be up and around. But don’t worry him about business, hear? Not till he’s strong. Positively not a word. I’ve told him I won’t have it.”

But the sick man seemed strangely apathetic about the affairs of the world. Somehow, in the dimness of that darkened chamber, he had caught a vision of something bigger than earthly things, and he lay back and rested.

One night, shortly before Thanksgiving, when Chris, just in from the crisp outside air, came as usual to the invalid chair to which the Father had been promoted, he looked up and smiled wistfully at his son.

“Sorry, boy, about college, but—maybe there’ll be a way yet,” he said sorrowfully.

“Oh, Dad!” cried the boy, summoning a simulated brightness which he did not feel. “Don’t you worry about college! I’m all right. Just so you get well, that’s all we care.”

“Well, you’re a good boy!” said the father tenderly, “and please, God, I’m going to get well. The doctor promises me that by the fifteenth of December, if I’m good, I may go down to the bank. So, you see, I’m really progressing. And Son, Mother and I have been talking about this house. We think the sale ought to be through as soon as possible for the sake of our creditors.”

“The doctor said you mustn’t talk about business yet,” said the boy, feeling as if his father had struck him.

“No, I’m not going to, Chris, only I didn’t want you to be utterly unprepared if somebody comes here to look at the house. The doctor said it wouldn’t do me any harm. In fact, it is a great relief to me to feel that I am doing all in my power to make up to my creditors. You won’t mind, Chris.”

“Of course not!” said Chris shortly, swallowing the lump that had begun to rise in his throat and the utter rebellion in his heart. He thought bitterly of the deputation that had come from college to say they’d arranged a way in which his last college year could be financed, but he had not even told his mother about it. He knew he was needed at home for a long time yet, and that even if his father regained his usual health and was not actually physically dependent upon him, that he should stay at home and get a job, stick by and make it as easy for the family as he could. He knew this was right. But he was feeling just a little proud of himself, and set up, too, that he had taken the stand, refusing the offer courteously but definitely, and had kept his mouth entirely shut about it. He felt quite a little bitter at the world, and unconfessedly at God, too, for “handing him out such a raw deal,” as he phrased it.

But the next day Chris began to look for a job in good earnest. Up to that time he had not felt that he should be away from the house more than a few minutes at a time, lest he should be needed.

It is true that Chris had, from the beginning, felt easy in his mind about job hunting. Of course, he knew all about the unemployed situation, and that older men than himself, with families dependent upon them, were looking vainly for jobs. He knew this in a general way, but still it never entered his head that he would have a hard time hunting something to do, a real paying job. He felt that his father’s son would be welcomed as an employee in any one of a dozen big concerns in town. He wasn’t expecting to be a bank president right at the first, of course, but he did expect that several places would be open to him at a good salary just because he was Christopher Walton Jr.

He had carefully looked the situation over, weighing the wisdom of undertaking a position as a bond salesman, as a cashier in a bank, as an assistant in a real estate office looking toward a partnership, or something in insurance. They all appealed to him in various ways. A managership in one of those big oil corporations might be good, too. Of course, he expected six month’s training in anything before he would be put in a responsible position with a worthwhile salary.

No, Chris was not conceited, as we usually count the meaning of that word. He was simply judging probabilities by his old standards, as his father’s son, the son of the leading bank president in town. He had, as yet, no conception of what it meant to be a bank president whose bank had closed its doors and put hundreds of poor people in destitute situations. A bank president, it’s true, who had promised to give up everything and stand by his creditors, but after all, a failure. And Chris was yet to find out that even nobility sometimes begets contempt. He even came to the place once where he wondered if some people would not have respected his father more if he had kept his own millions and lived on in his big house, with servants and cars galore. He came to the place where he found that some men respected money more than even honesty—bowed to it, deferred to it, honored those who had it. His young, furious, indignant soul had many things to learn and many experiences to pass through before he found peace.

So Chris started out early the next morning to find his “position,” as he called it, expecting to be able to announce his success to his father on his return.

Chris went first to three best-known bond houses in the city, the heads of which were supposedly personal friends of his father. The head of the first was in conference and declined to see him that day. The head of the second was in a hurry and told him so at once, but informed him coolly that there was no opening with their house at present. They were thinking of dismissing a couple of men, rather than taking on any. Perhaps in the spring. How was his father? He glanced at his watch, and Chris knew the interview was over.

The third one told him frankly that there was no business at present to warrant taking on new men, and that even if there were, he, Chris, should finish college before he thought of applying for such a job. He suggested that money could be borrowed for his last college year. And when Chris indignantly told him he was needed at home and informed him of his invitation to go to college under scholarships, the man shook his head and told him it was simply crazy to decline that offer, that his father would never allow him to be so foolish when he was well and ‘round again.

There might, of course, be truth in some of the things the man said, but Chris closed his lips and left. He could not tell this friend of his father’s how utterly destitute they were going to be and how he must work to help his father and mother. He simply closed his lips and left.

All that day he went from place to place, marking each one off his list as he left, his heart growing heavier and heavier, and more bewildered, as he plodded on. The bright prospects, which he had held as many and to be had for the asking, were receding fast.

His sad heart was not made lighter by meeting Gilda Carson, just getting into Bob Tyson’s car. She was home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday, and she tossed him the most casual smile, hardly as if she knew him at all. Never an eager lighting of the face, nor a joyous calling out to him to be sure and come over that evening. Just a cool bow, and she was off, smiling up at Bob as they drove away together.

He frowned and walked half a block beyond his destination, telling his bitter heart that he didn’t care in the least what Gilda did, nor what Bob Tyson thought, nor anything. He didn’t care! He didn’t care! He didn’t care! But yet he knew in his sad heart that he did care. He cared that his pride had been hurt. Gilda herself wasn’t worth caring about, of course. In a sense he had always known that, but he had enjoyed taking the prettiest girl in school about and getting away from others whenever he chose. And to have her freeze him out this way, just because his father had lost money! Well, he was off her for life anyway, and he’d show her, he said fiercely to himself.

He thought, with a pang, of the fellows off in college, the boys he had played baseball with, and football. If the fellows were only back home, about town, it would be different. He wouldn’t feel so alone. Boys never snubbed like girls. If Walt Gillespie were only home now, he would show them all a thing or two. Walt was his best friend. Of course, Walt had been a bit lofty when he first began to tell about his being president of the fraternity, and about Dick Bradford; and come to think about it, Walt hadn’t written since he went back. Of course, college took a lot of time and fellows weren’t keen on writing letters. But—well—if it had been Walt who had to stay home, he wouldn’t have left him cold, without word that way. He might have found time for a postcard. Just some word about the winning of a game or how the frat was going or something.

A new pang shot through him, and his bitterness continued to grow.

He came home at night dog weary, his young face almost haggard, with gray lines about his eyes and mouth. His mother watched him anxiously across the table but asked no questions. She knew, as mothers know without asking, that he had been out to hunt a job and had not succeeded.

Then, next morning, when he started on his rounds among a less aristocratic group of firms, he had his jaw set firmly. Before night he would find something. He would force himself in somewhere. It was ridiculous that nobody wanted him. There was a place for him somewhere. He hadn’t tried but one day, yet. Of course, he would find something before night.