"In Rome you must do as the Romans, or be done!" I quoted jocularly.
Mrs. Dround smiled appreciatively.
"From all accounts you have been a tremendous Roman!"
"Well, at least I haven"t been done--not yet."
Jane Dround smiled again and turned her face from the window of the library, through which could be seen dots of ice and snow sailing out on the blue lake. The years she had been gone in Europe had dealt lightly with her. She had grown a trifle stouter, and looked splendidly well--dark, and strong, and full of life.
"I did my best," she continued half humorously. "I tried to get lost in darkest Africa beyond the reach of telegrams and newspapers. But a party of Chicago people coming up the Nile crossed the path of our daha-biyeh, recognized us, came abroad--and brought the story. Cables wouldn"t hold him then! We came as the crow flies; it was no use to plead sickness--he was ready to leave me behind in Paris!"
She laughed again genially.
"It was nothing much to get excited about," I replied a little impatiently; "and it has pa.s.sed now, anyway, like a winter snow in the city--slush, water, nothing!"
"But the principle! You forget the principle!" she remonstrated dryly.
"I know--and he"s going to resign from the presidency--that ought to satisfy his principle--but we must keep him on the board."
"It was a judge, too! A sworn officer of the law!" Mrs. Dround interrupted, quoting demurely from Henry I"s remarks about the injunction scandal.
"Very well, he can make over his stock to you, then! It won"t trouble you, and you can draw the big dividends we are going to pay soon. I don"t want him to get out now, when the fruit is almost ripe to shake."
"Is that the only reason?" Mrs. Dround asked quickly.
"Of course, we don"t want his stock coming on the market in a big block.
It would break us all up. And it might easily get into the wrong hands."
For Mr. Dround, in the brief interview that we had had on his return, had intimated his desire not only to withdraw from the presidency of the corporation, which had been merely a nominal office, but to dispose of his stock as soon as the agreement expired in the fall, suggesting that I had best find some friendly hands to take his big holding. In his gentlemanly way he had told me that he had had enough of me and was quite ready to snow me under, if it could be done in a polite and friendly fashion.
"So you want him to wait?" Mrs. Dround suggested indifferently.
"Yes, until I am ready!"
She made no reply to this remark, and after a moment I said more lightly:--
"But I came to welcome you home,--I want you still to be my friend, my partner!"
"They say you are a dangerous partner," she retorted, looking closely at me,--"deep in all sorts of speculative schemes, and likely to slip. They say you are un--scrupulous"--she drawled the word mockingly--"and a lot more bad things. Do you think that is the right kind of partner for a simple woman?"
"If you"ve got the nerve!"
"Well, let me show you some of the new pictures we have bought." And she turned me off with a lot of talk about pictures and stuffs and stones, until I arose to leave.
Shortly afterwards my carriage took me back to the city, where I had to meet some gentlemen who were interested in my schemes for the development of the new Southwest. As I rode through the windy, dusty streets, my thoughts went back over the years since that time when at the suggestion of this woman I had just left, I had put my hand to building something large out of Henry I. Dround"s tottering estate.
In a busy life like mine, one event shades into another. Each path to which a man sets his feet leads to some cross-roads, and from there any one of the branches will lead on to its own cross-roads. While the adventurer is on his way it is hard to tell why he takes one turning and not another, why he lays his course here and not there. Years later he may see it plotted plain, as I do to-day--plotted as on a map. Then the wanderer may try to explain what made him move this way or that. Yet the little determining causes that turned his mind at the moment of choice are forever forgotten. The big, permanent motive remains: there is the broad highroad--but why was it left, why this turn and double across the main track?
So it was with me. The main highroad of my ambition was almost lost in the thickets in which I found myself. Struggling day by day against the forces that opposed me, I had lost sight of direction. The words with Jane Dround, the flash of her dark eyes, pierced my obscurity, gave me again a view of the destiny to which I had set myself. Some fire in her fed me with courage, and made my spirit lighter than it had been for months....
When I reached home in the evening, I found Sarah ill with a nervous headache.
"Will is back!" she exclaimed on seeing me, and her tone scarcely concealed a meaning beyond her words.
"What"s that? He didn"t send me word that he was coming."
"May telephoned--he"s just got in."
Something unexpected must have brought him suddenly all the way from Texas, where he was looking after our interests. The news was disturbing.
"I saw Jane Dround this afternoon," I remarked idly. "She"s looking fine--never saw her better."
"Jane!" my wife said slowly. "So she"s back once more." Then after a pause she exclaimed:--
"I don"t like her!"
Sarah, who rarely said a bitter word about any one, spoke this harshly, and I looked at her in surprise.
"I don"t trust that woman, Van! She is secret. And I believe she influenced you--that time about the judge."
It was the first time for months that Sarah had referred to this matter.
"I"ll go and ring up May," I said, not caring to refute this wild accusation, "and ask them to come over to-night."
"I asked them for dinner, but she wouldn"t come," Sarah remarked gloomily. "No one wants to come here but people like the Webbs and Coopers--people who think they can make something out of your schemes."
"Oh, I guess they aren"t the only ones who are willing to come. And what"s the matter with the Webbs and the Coopers? If the rest of your friends don"t like us, we can get along without their society. I guess New York will stand us, and that"s where we shall be before many years, if all goes well. This place is only a gossipy old village."
"I don"t want to go to New York!" Sarah wailed.
When I had May at the telephone, she answered my invitation in a dry little voice:--
"Yes, we are coming over to see you about a matter. Will has something important to say to you."
By the tone of May"s voice I judged that we should have a rather lively family party, and I was not mistaken. Sarah was still lying on the lounge in my study when Will and May came in after dinner. There was battle in May"s eyes and in her tight-shut lips. It had been a long time since she had come to the house when I was at home. And to-night Will, too, was looking very pale and troubled.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Couldn"t you find any one else to do your dirty work but your own brother?_"]
"May," I said, "you look as if you had a gun trained on me. Fire away, only make it something new. I am tired of that old matter about the judge. "Most everybody has forgotten all about that except you and Sarah."
"It"s something new, fast enough, Van; but it isn"t any better," she retorted. "Couldn"t you find any one else to do your dirty work but your own brother?"
"What"s the matter now?"
"Show him the article, Will."