Joan and Co.
grown deeper—as though her eyes, always deep, had now become like
one of those bottomless lakes in the mountains, and her lips, always
tender, had taken on the infinite tenderness of a mother. He had come
prepared to put all the past behind him, and he found it intensified.
“I’d rather forget it all—with you,” he answered.
“Why?” she asked directly.
The reason was that he felt a man ought never to come to her except
with tales of success—with reports of good fortune. A lady does not
care to hear from her knight of reversals. And yet as he looked into
those new depths he found it difficult to express this in any way that
would not hurt her.
“It isn’t pleasant reading,” he replied awkwardly.
“You are ashamed?” she asked in astonishment.
“No,” replied Dicky quickly. “Not that.”
“Then tell me.”
He sat down opposite her and leaned forward with his hands clasped over
his knees. He wanted to make the recital as brief as possible.
“After all, it’s an old story,” he said. “Dad took a turn at the market
and got cleaned out. It was necessary to cash in everything to pay up.
That left us broke so we moved to a flat in Brooklyn and I took a job
with the new firm to learn the business. Now tell me about yourself.
How did you happen to drift in there?”
“I came in with Mr. Devons. Don’t you remember him?”
Dicky squinted his eyes a moment.
“Seems to me I saw him somewhere once.”
“He was at the house. He is the man I—I almost ran over.”
“Good Lord, is that the fellow?”
“He is the man for whom I borrowed the money. Why, he’s a partner of
yours, Dicky.”
He looked puzzled.
“A partner of mine?”
“When I took the money I agreed to make you a silent partner. So you’re
a partner of mine and a partner of his. You and I have between us a
one-third interest.”
Dicky rose to his feet.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed. “Then I’ll be able to pay back
that five thousand to dad!”
“You went to him for it?”
“I had no other place to go.”
“You can pay back that and a great deal more besides. Why, Mark says—”
“Mark?” he interrupted.
The color came to her cheeks.
“Mr. Devons,” she explained. “He expects to make his fortune on his
share.”
“Then dad ought to make half a fortune,” he nodded.
“Only it’s really yours.”
“Mine? I’d have a nerve to claim it. Why, it was all on account of me
that he got into the hole.”
He had said too much and realized it the next second when she pressed
him to go on.
“Somehow,” he faltered ahead,—“somehow dad thinks a lot of me. I’m sort
of a weakness of his. One day I got to telling of something I wanted
a whole lot—something I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything. So
what does he do but try to get it for me. He figured it would take
several million, and had it all worked out on a pad how he could get
that. Only he didn’t get it. Instead the other fellows got all he had.
I guess it’s up to me now to return what I can.”
“Was what you wanted—as valuable as all that?”
“If dad had made all he set out to make and then doubled that, what I
wanted would have been worth it and more if I could have got it,” he
answered earnestly.
“But what—”
“The chance has passed, anyway,” he concluded. “But I want to get back
to him and tell him about this. He’s worried and that interferes with
his golf.”
Apparently he had recovered his old good-humor.
“You ought to see dad playing golf,” he smiled. “He has taken off
fifteen pounds already. It’s doing him a world of good, but I couldn’t
see how I was going to manage it much longer on twelve dollars a week.
But if he’s going to get dividends—why, he thought I lost that five
thousand the first week!”
“And you?”
“I thought so, too,” he admitted.
“You—you didn’t have much confidence in me, Dicky.”
“Not as a business woman,” he confessed. “And here you come out ahead
of the whole crowd of us.”
He met her eyes a moment.
“Joan,” he trembled, “if you go ahead and reveal any more talents or
anything, I won’t be able to stand it.”
“Stand what?” she demanded.
“You. Just your wonderful self. You make a man dizzy.”
“But, Dicky—” she began gently.
He turned away from her.
“Good-night,” he said abruptly. “I must go.”
It’s a pity that he did not look once again into the depths of those
eyes, for there was something in them at that moment it would have done
his soul good to see.
And it remained there as she sat on alone long after he had gone. As
the realization of what it was seeped to the very heart of her, it
quickened her pulse and glorified her face until she felt as though
suddenly she had stepped out of the shade into the full beat of the
living sun. For a little while she gave herself up to the sheer magic
warmth of it without daring to look about—without daring to give it a
name. So one awakens sometimes in the month of May, scarcely venturing
to awaken fully lest the celestial chorus of bird songs and blossom
fragrance and the springtime radiance of golden light vanish. But
insistently the word she tried to suppress—the word that expressed
it all—worked its way through her consciousness to her lips, until
finally, very gently, she whispered it. Such a tiny word it was to mean
so much. Such a soft, tender word it was to harbor such creative power.
Love! One could pronounce it between heart-beats on the tag end of a
breath. A sigh took more effort. And yet, when once pronounced, how
it sent her blood to racing—how it put her in touch with the stars in
their firmament, how it made her one with the eternal verities of life,
even of death!
She rose and faced him where he had been. With her head back and her
two arms stretching out unconsciously, she whispered, “Dicky!”
That was all she said, and yet it meant as much as that other word. The
two words meant the same. Love was one word and Dicky was the other.
And they meant the same thing. They stood for the same thing. They were
synonymous.
But as soon as she admitted this her cheeks turned a flaming scarlet
and she looked about as though afraid of being seen. She raised one
hand to her lips as though cautioning them to be careful. Because in a
way she had no right to utter his name as she had. He had said nothing
of love. He had come at her bidding and hurried away as soon as he
could. Once, a few months back, he had spoken, but she had silenced
him. Much had happened since then. Much had happened to them both.
Her thoughts went back to Dicky as he had lifted his face all smudged
when she came upon him in the factory. He was in greasy overalls. He
was so disguised that one would have thought she could not recognize
him, and yet it was at that moment she seemed to pierce externals to
the heart of him. With only his eyes to look into, she had looked so
far into them that she had come upon the man himself. Once before she
had glimpsed this man—when uncovered in the snow he had stood by the
door of the limousine and sworn her allegiance. The two men were the
same. The man who had been with her this evening was the same.
So the burn left her cheeks and she raised her head again.
To herself she said:
“Dicky, I can’t help it. Dicky, I—I love you.”
It was a pity he was not there to hear.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE DAY COMES
Under the spur of Hartley and Starling, Devons found himself working as
hard as he had ever worked in his life. In the flood of new orders that
came in there was no help for it. As yet, no one had been trained to do
his work, so that it meant for him actual supervision of the process
during its various manufacturing stages. Hartley was as merciless with
him as he was with himself. Ten hours, fifteen hours, even twenty hours
a day meant nothing. As a matter of fact, at the end of two weeks they
had a night shift at work, and Hartley often remained at the plant
until one in the morning. So did Starling and so did Devons.
“We want to break into this market with a rush,” said Hartley. “A
little later, when we are firmly established, we can lay back on our
oars.”
This left Devons little time for Joan, but with the assurance that
came each day at the nightly conference with Hartley, who went over
in conference with him the new business of the preceding twenty-four
hours, it seemed less and less necessary to see her. Always she
remained in the background, and he rested content in the knowledge
that hour by hour he was strengthening the guarantee of a success that
in the end should make her his. He had given up his little attic room
and taken an apartment in a rather pretentious hotel more convenient
to the plant. On the salary of one hundred dollars a week that Hartley
had suggested was fair for his services, there was no reason in the
world why he should not make the change. This gave him a living-room,
a bedroom and bath. In what time he could spare from the factory he
thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of these new quarters, and in a few days
found himself consistently living up to them to the extent of dropping
into the hotel barber shop for his morning shave, and naturally enough
strolling from there to the hotel dining-room for his breakfast. It was
costing him as much a day as formerly it did a week, and yet he had
considerably more left over. Some of this he deposited in the bank and
some of it he converted into crisp new dollar bills which he locked up
in his dress-suit-case. For, though he smiled a little at it now as
a bit of eccentric foolishness, he still clung to his original idea
of going back home with his bulging bag of money. He could have put
it more conveniently in the form of a check, but the effect would not
have been the same. A bit of paper bearing a signature was neither as
impressive nor as dramatic as crisp new bills. Silver would have been
even better because there was a ring to it, but it was not so easily
handled.
The strain of the long hours began to tell on Devons at the end of a
couple of weeks. He held on grimly and without complaint, but the past
had drawn heavily on his physique and the unusual mental excitement
kept him awake nights. Often he came back to his apartment at two in
the morning only to lie awake until four with his brain running riot
over Joan and home and the figures that to Hartley served merely as a
tonic. Then a fitful sleep of three hours and he was up again.
Hartley did not understand what those figures meant to Devons. To him
they remained merely figures. He did not translate them into terms of
life. Even when he saw in them the prospect of doubling his income,
that meant scarcely more than a fresh problem of reinvestment. With
his wants already well cared for, there was a pleasant satisfaction
in piling up a larger reserve, but it was nothing to grow breathless
about. As they increased, the dollars became more and more abstract.
But Devons was still in the concrete stage where every dollar stood
for something tangible. To see them come flooding down in the form of
things for her, in the form of an increasing number of bills in his
suit-case, in the form of constantly increasing additions to his own
comfort, was a type of intoxication.
He held on during the long days of June until toward the end he found
the kettles and the thermostat begin slowly to revolve so that he was
forced to cling to something to keep himself upright. He held on when
at night he heard Hartley’s voice coming as from a distance and found
that he remembered nothing of what he said. He held on when at odd
moments he found himself seized with uncontrollable fits of laughter.
He held on until one evening he reeled and fell in front of Hartley.
* * * * *
Devons recovered in a few minutes, and Hartley escorted him to his