She regained her palette, and turned toward her easel with a businesslike air, quite as if she were a painter for a livelihood, and said, "Now suppose you run along and let me work. You can come back here for me at--say--one o"clock, and take me to luncheon; that is--if you"re not too busy!"
And Jimmy, transported with delight, made a vast pretense of business and hastened away, lest she change her mind. He had the wisdom to let well enough alone, and knew that time is the best medicine for annoyance. But he was there in MacDougall Alley,--just the same--with marvelous punctuality.
And there can be no question that he was a master host when it came to luncheons, dinners, suppers, or midnight lunch counters. With him it was an art, cultivated to the highest point of efficiency. Moreover, timorous and fearful lest he blunderingly lose his advantages, he did not press his suit too far and, as a result, Mary Allen forgot his seeming neglect. There was but one embarra.s.sing moment when, after a moment"s silence she said, "Do tell me, is there anything at all new down home? Dad is so uncommunicative that he never has much to say about the town itself, and everyone else is too busy to write me."
"Nothing new that I noticed when I was there last," said Jimmy. "Of course, being on the road all the time I"m--well--I"m so busy that--ummmh! Isn"t that our waiter? Some of those pears over there on that other table look good enough to eat and--wish we could get some strawberries! Do you like hot-house grapes?"
He might have gone through an entire horticultural catalogue, had not his roving eyes at that moment suddenly been arrested by something that caused them to open widely and fix themselves. The something was a keen-looking man seated at another table who was glaring at time with a steady and highly interrogative look. For once Mr. James Gollop"s cheery self-confidence deserted him and he was highly distressed; for the keen-faced man happened to be his employer and his employer up to that moment believed one James Gollop was out on the road some hundred or so miles from New York looking after the interests of the Columbus Chocolate Company. Jimmy recovered sufficiently to bow and the bow was somewhat frigidly acknowledged. Jimmy"s wits worked fast--very fast.
"Pardon me, won"t you please," he addressed Mary Allen; "but there is a man sitting over there to whom I wish to speak for just an instant. Got to make an appointment with him, and this is opportune."
"Certainly," replied the lady, and Jimmy got up, crossed to his employer, and without giving the latter a chance to say anything, thrust out his hand and said, "Howdydo, Mr. Falkner. Howdydo! Got in off the run early this trip and was coming down to see you as soon as I had lunch."
"Oh, you were, were you?" dryly remarked his "boss," and the unhappy Jimmy distinguished a tone of sarcasm. "Very kind of you, I"m sure.
We"ve been wanting to hear from you for several days. I"ll expect you at just three o"clock this afternoon."
Stunned by this unusual lack of cordiality, Jim said, "Very well, sir, I"ll be there," and with as much dignity as he could command, turned and walked back to his table, but wondered heavily, what on earth he had done; what was wrong; whether some prominent customer had gone bankrupt or if Falkner merely had a grouch.
"I thought you went to see a friend, but you look as if you had been talking with an undertaker," commented his guest.
"And that"s just the way I feel about it," admitted Jimmy. "Because I"ve got to meet him at three o"clock this afternoon, and I had antic.i.p.ated the pleasure of going somewhere with you."
"The mean old thing!" she exclaimed, impulsively, and Jimmy"s heart b.u.mped at the knowledge that she, too, was disappointed.
"But," he suggested, hopefully, "if I called for you at the studio at about six o"clock couldn"t we dine together?"
And when she accepted his invitation with unconcealed enthusiasm, his spirits again soared and he forgot even the baleful presence of Falkner for a time, and when he did remember him, discovered that his "kill joy"
had gone.
Promptly at three o"clock he breezed into his firm"s offices with all habitual cheeriness, exchanged a swift run of badinage with those he met, and was ushered into the manager"s office. Falkner did not meet him with the customary smile of welcome.
"Well," he said, "you seem to have raised a devil of a row out West, and if you can offer any explanation at all for such conduct I"m prepared to listen to it before we go any further. If you think that"s the kind of advertising a reputable firm wants you"re about as poor a guesser as ever traveled on a mileage book."
"Why--why--what"s up?" blurted Jimmy.
"What"s up? You"ve got a nerve to ask that!" roared the manager, banging his fist on the top of his desk. "Here, look at these!"
He handed Jim a small sheaf of sheets consisting of letters and telegrams. The first was from a jobbing firm:
"Cancel order given your man Gollop. Sorry, but entire board of directors are Republican and resent Yimville affair."
A second was from another firm which had been one of Jim"s best customers and read:
"Advise Gollop not to make this territory again until Yimville affair blows over. Granger"s supporters buzzing like live hornets."
A more portentous looking doc.u.ment bearing the heading of the "State Republican Committee Headquarters" bore the concise statement that unless an immediate, full, and public apology was forthcoming from one James Gollop for impersonating the Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger at an important political meeting in the city of Yimville were not immediately forthcoming, legal action would be taken for damages, on the ground of misrepresentation, false pretense and willful intent to damage the reputation and political career of one of the most distinguished men in the state. Another letter was a round robin, signed by several firms, demanding the immediate discharge of "that contemptible practical joker, James Gollop," and still another was from no less person that the Judge of the Fourth District Court, in which what was said of the same James Gollop was enough to wither that unfortunate individual. Someone had sent a stack of newspaper clippings three inches in thickness, from which Jimmy gathered that it had taken but a day or two to pick up his trail and expose him beyond all possible dispute.
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Jimmy, aghast, and wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead. "I didn"t have any idea of kicking up such a fuss as that. I just blundered into a chance to have some fun with that pompous old rooster that hated me because we looked so much alike and----" In the midst of all his woes he could not suppress a laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt.
"So you still think it"s a joke, do you?" snorted the irate manager, exasperated by this further evidence of irresponsibility. "Well, you"ll not think so any longer. I"ll attend to that. You turn your samples in and go to the cashier with your expense account. You"re fired! Maybe you can understand that! Fired! F-I-R-E-D!"
"You needn"t have troubled to spell it out," remonstrated Jimmy. "I get you. But--hang it all, man!--you might at least put me into some new territory. I didn"t mean anything by it. I"ll admit I was a chump; but I can sell stuff, and you know it."
He stopped and stared at the floor with a face so frankly troubled and perplexed that the manager for the moment forgot his wrath. The boy in Jimmy Gollop was never more manifest than at that moment. There was something very appealing about him that Falkner could not fail to discern.
"Jimmy," he said, gravely, "I"m sorry, but it has to be done. What on earth made you such a fool? You must have been crazy!"
"I sort of reckon I must have been," admitted Jimmy, dolefully.
"But--honestly!--I didn"t mean to do any real damage to that old stiff Granger, and certainly not to the firm. The firm? Why Mr. Falkner, I"ve stuck up for it for nearly ten years because it has treated me white, and because it"s an honest firm that makes honest goods. But--well--all I can do is to square matters up as best I can. You people have been very good to me. Very good and very kind. I"ve drawn your money and,--prospered, and so I"ll write the public apology or confession, or whatever you call it, that those chaps out there demand, and take all the blame. And I"ll write to every customer that has communicated with you and tell "em that, although I"m out and gone, the orders were solicited in good faith and that it"s not fair to make you suffer for that fool joke of mine. I"m done with jokes of all sorts from now on.
I"ll do anything except this--I"ll not write one word of apology to that man Granger!"
Falkner looked out of the window as if troubled, and then said, with a sigh of regret, "Well, Jim, I"m sorry, but it can"t be helped. You"re the best man we ever had out, and--by Jove!--I"ll put that into writing so you can have something to show, and you can use me personally as a reference when you strike someone else for territory. But, mind you, I shall have to tell them confidentially the reasons why we had to let you go."
"Of course! That"s only fair," said Jimmy, his sober common sense impelling him to this admission.
"And--when this tempest blows by, you can have any other territory that comes open, Jim," volunteered Falkner; "that is--provided that you cut the jokes out. Surely you"ve had fun enough by now to last you a lifetime!"
"I have! I have!" a.s.sented Jimmy lugubriously. "I"ve played the biggest joke of all on myself. By heck! I"ve joked myself out of my own job, and that"s the limit. Joe Miller never did that and Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Bill Nye and George Ade, none of "em ever reached that height of humor. The only difference between us is that they got cash for their jokes, whereas all the pay I get is the boot and the chance to go yelping down the street with a washboiler tied to my tail. Well, if a fellow puts grease on the front door steps he shouldn"t squeal if he forgets and falls down himself."
It was not until he stood outside the main entrance to the building that he had a full sense of homelessness. It was not until then that he knew what it meant to be without anchorage. It seemed to him that all of those who hurried past in the winter"s twilight had something to do and that he alone was adrift. He alone had dipped into the depths of folly and he alone had proved irresponsible. And his employment just then meant much to him. Subconsciously, he had builded with such confidence.
He was now aware that he had based all upon a permanency of income that he had conceived to be fixed. His home, his mother"s contentment, his dreams of winning life companionship with the only girl he had ever loved, seemed to have depended upon the employment he had lost. And now all was gone! Swept away. He was a most forlorn and melancholy optimist as he stood there in the early twilight of winter, confusedly considering his position.
"Well," he thought at last, "they can"t keep a good man down," and then after a moment"s further reflection added, "But they can give him an awful wallop!"
The staring eye of an illuminated clock reminded him that MacDougall Alley was some distance away and he suffered a peculiar mixture of sadness and gladness as he began his journey. It seemed to him that he was a different person from the James Gollop who had happily invaded MacDougall"s artistic precincts that morning from the James Gollop who was now disconsolately making his way thither. That Gollop of the morning had been happy and bright because he had a job; but this Gollop of the evening, jobless, and with a black mark against him that was too notorious to escape the amused attention of all possible employers in his line, was but a sad dog. It required conscious mental effort on his part to a.s.sume a cheerful demeanor when he climbed the studio stairs. He wished that he dared tell the "Candy Girl" all about it, but decided that it would be ungenerous to bother anyone else with his woes, and any indecision in this regard was ended before the evening was over because she was so frankly and unaffectedly happy that he hadn"t the heart to say anything that might possibly mar it. Yet, even whilst they sat in a theater listening to a most cheerful musical comedy the sober and responsible side of his mind was weighing necessities. The first of these, he knew, must be economies; for he antic.i.p.ated that it might be a considerable time before he could again be earning an income, and there was always the little home down in Baltimore and its occupant to be considered first, and his own pleasures must be relegated to a secondary place. He was therefore rather heart-broken, but firm in his final explanation that night as he parted from her in front of the Martha Putnam Hotel.
"That business session I had this afternoon," he said, trying to keep his voice from betraying his trouble, "has unfortunately upset all my plans. I can"t have that little four days vacation I had been planning."
"What? How horrid!" exclaimed the girl. "I--I thought we were to----"
Her disappointment and distress were so manifest that Mr. James Gollop had a first-cla.s.s fight with himself to keep from blurting out the truth there in the hotel rotunda and telling her that on the next morning he was starting on what promised to be a long hunt for employment. But he escaped such confession by saying that he had great hopes of returning to New York within a few days. In fact he actually predicted that it would be so. And after all, the only lie he told was embodied in that word "Return."
CHAPTER XI
Mr. James Gollop discovered in the course of the following three days that although most business men enjoy a joke, their sense of humor is so deficient that they don"t care to combine jest and business. His ill-fame had preceded him, and in addition thereto, it was the off-season, and vacancies few.
"We"d like to have you, Jim," said one sales manager, "but the trouble is that we should want you to take up the territory where you are well known, and that, of course, is impossible."
Others told him to call later in the season. Others who would have given him samples were firms of such small caliber that he could not see any future, and several were willing to take him on commission sales only.
The only thing that helped him was that prodigious store of optimism which impelled him after each rebuff to hope for a change just around the corner.
It was when he felt at rather low ebb that he pa.s.sed, rather disconsolately, the Flat Iron Building and remembered Martin. Having no other place to go, he decided to call upon that shrewd gentleman and gather from such a source of hard common sense fresh courage. He turned in through the big swinging door that let a gust of winter into each compartment as it whirled, trundled it around and belched it into the great hallway, and somewhat absent-mindedly collided with a man who was coming out.
"h.e.l.lo! She b.u.mps!" said Jimmy good-naturedly and then--"Why--why it"s you, is it, Mr. Martin? I was just coming up to your offices to see if by chance you happened to be in."