Whenever money was scarce they didn"t buy them. If it were not for weddings and funerals and Christmas and Easter they wouldn"t buy them at all. Then, too, they were expensive to raise, and difficult. You couldn"t do it by casting a little seed into the ground. Every azalea was imported from Belgium; every lily-bulb from j.a.pan. True, the carnations were grown from slips, but if he only knew the trouble they gave! Those at which he was looking, and which had the innocent air of springing and blooming of their own accord, had been through no less than four tedious processes since the slips were taken in the preceding February. First they had been planted in sand for the root to strike; then transferred to flats, or shallow wooden boxes; then bedded out in the garden; and lastly brought into the house. If he would only consider the labor involved in all that, to say nothing of the incessant watching and watering, and keeping the house at the proper temperature by night and by day--well, he could see for himself.
He did see for himself. He said so absently, because he was noting the fact that her serious, earnest eyes were of the peculiar shade which, when seen in eyes, is called green. It was still absently that he added, "And you have to work pretty hard."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I don"t mind that. Anything to live."
"What are you doing there?"
There was an exasperated note in her voice as she replied: "Oh, these are the Easter lilies. We have to begin on them now."
"And do you do them all?"
"I do, when there"s no one else. Father"s men keep leaving." She flung him a look he would have thought defiant if he hadn"t found it frank. "I don"t blame them. Half the time they"re not paid."
"I see. So that you fill in. Do you like it?"
"Would you like doing what isn"t of any use?--what will never be of any use? Would you like to be always running as hard as you can, just to fall out of the race?"
He tried to smile. "I shouldn"t like it for long."
"Well, there"s that," she said, as though he had suggested a form of consolation. "It won"t be for long. It can"t be. Father won"t be able to go on like this."
He decided to take the bull by the horns. "Is that because my father doesn"t want to renew the lease?"
She shrugged her shoulders again. "Oh no, not particularly. It _is_ that--and everything else."
He felt it the part of tact to make signs of going, uttering a few parting injunctions with regard to the mother as he did so.
"And I wouldn"t leave her too much alone," he advised. "She could easily slip out without attracting any one"s attention. Tell your father I said so. I suppose he"s not in the house."
"He"s off somewhere trying to engage a night fireman."
He ignored this information to emphasize his counsels. "It"s most important that while she"s in this state of mind some one should be with her. And if we knew of anything she"d specially like--"
She continued to work industriously. "The thing she"d like best in this world won"t do her any good when it happens." She threw in a bulb with impetuous vehemence. "It"s to have Matt out of jail. He will be out in the course of a few months. But he"ll be--a jail-bird."
"We must try to help him live that down."
She turned her great greenish eyes on him again with that look which struck him as both frank and pitiful. "That"s one of the things people in our position can"t do. It"s the first thing mother herself will think of when she sees Matt hanging about the house--for he"ll never get a job."
"He can help your father. He can be the night fireman."
She shrugged her shoulders with the fatalistic movement he was beginning to recognize. "Father won"t need a night fireman by that time."
He could only say: "All the same, your mother must be watched. She can"t be allowed to throw herself from Duck Rock, now, can she?"
"I don"t say allowed. But if she did--"
"Well, what then?"
"She"d be out of it. That would be something."
"Admitting that it would be something for her, what would it be for your father and you?"
She relaxed the energy of her hands. He had time to notice them. It hurt him to see anything so shapely coa.r.s.ened with hard work. "Wouldn"t it be that much?" she asked, as if reaching a conclusion. "If she were out of it, it would be a gain all round."
Never having heard a human being speak like this, he was shocked. "But everything can"t be so black. There must be something somewhere."
She glanced up at him obliquely. Months afterward he recalled the look.
Her tone, when she spoke, seemed to be throwing him a challenge as well as making an admission. "Well, there is--one thing."
He spoke triumphantly. "Ah, there _is_ one thing, then?"
"Yes, but it may not happen."
"Oh, lots of things may not happen. We just have to hope they will.
That"s all we"ve got to live by."
There was a lovely solemnity about her. "And even if it did happen, so many people would be opposed to it that I"m not sure it would do any good, after all."
"Oh, but we won"t think of the people who"d be opposed to it--"
"We should have to, because"--the sweet fixity of her gaze gave him an odd thrill--"because you"d be one."
He laughed as he held out his hand to say good-by. "Don"t be too sure.
And in any case it won"t matter about me."
She declined to take his hand on the ground that her own was soiled with loam, but she mystified him slightly when she said: "It will matter about you; and if the thing ever happens I want you to remember that I told you so. I can"t play fair; but I"ll play as fair as I can."
CHAPTER III
Thor was deaf to these enigmatic words in the excitement of perceiving that the girl had beauty. The discovery gave him a new sort of pleasure as he turned his runabout toward the town. Beauty had not hitherto been a condition to which he attached great value. If anything, he had held it in some scorn. Now, for the first time in his emotional life, he was stirred by a girl"s mere prettiness--a quite unusual prettiness, it had to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a little worn by work, a little coa.r.s.ened by wind and weather; a prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. He was obliged to remind himself that it was nothing to him, since he had never swerved from the intention to marry Lois Willoughby as soon as he had made a start in practice and come into the money he was to get at thirty; but he could see it was the sort of thing by which other men might be affected, and came to a mental standstill there.
Driving on into the city, he went straight to his father"s office in Commonwealth Row. It was already after four o"clock, and except for two young men sorting checks and putting away ledgers, the cagelike divisions of the banking department were empty. One of the men was whistling; the other was calling in a loud, gay voice, "Say, Cheever, what about to-night?"--signs that the enforced decorum of the day was past.
Claude was in the outer office reserved for customers. He wore his overcoat, hat, and gloves. A stick hung over his left arm by its crooked handle. The ticker was silent, but a portion of the tape fluttered between his gloved fingers.
Though his back was toward the door, he recognized his half-brother"s step with that mixture of envy and irritation which Thor"s presence always stirred in him. He was not without fraternal affection, especially when Thor was away; when he was at home it was difficult for Claude not to resent the elder"s superiority. Claude called it superiority for want of a better word, though he meant no more than a combination of advantages he himself would have enjoyed. He meant Thor"s prospective money, his good spirits, good temper, and good health.
Claude had not good health, which excused, in his judgment, his lack of good spirits and good temper. Neither had Claude any money beyond the fifteen hundred dollars a year he earned in his father"s office. He was in the habit of saying to himself, and in confidence to his friends, that it was "d.a.m.ned hard luck" that he should be compelled to live on a pittance like that, when Thor, within a few months, would come into a good thirty thousand a year.
It was some consolation that Thor was what his brother called "an ugly beast"--sallow and lantern-jawed, with a long, narrow head that looked as if it had been sat on. The eyes were not bad; that had to be admitted; they were as friendly as a welcoming light; but the mouth was so big and aggressive that even the mustache Thor was trying to grow couldn"t subdue its boldness. As for the nose and chin, they looked--according to Claude"s account--as if they had been created soft, and subjected to a system of grotesque elongation before hardening.
Claude could the more safely make game of his brother"s looks seeing that he himself was notably handsome, with traits as regular as if they had been carved, and a profile so exact that it was frequently exposed in photographers" windows, to the envy of gentlemen gazers. While Thor had once tried to mitigate his features by a beard that had been unsuccessful and had now disappeared, Claude wouldn"t disfigure himself by a hair. He was as clean-shaven as a marble Apollo, and not less neatly limbed.
"Gone." Claude raised his eyes just long enough to utter the word.
Thor came to an abrupt stop. "Club?"