University of Virginia Library

2. II

Mrs. George Crosby sat at her desk in the morning-room, a pile of unpaid bills before her and a thin line of worry between her eyebrows. An indescribable atmosphere of unrest and weariness hovered about her, accentuating the traces of wear which years of struggle had left behind. The limp folds of her tea-gown hanging dejectedly around her stressed her dispirited appearance. The room, with its worn rug, soiled, cretonne-upholstered furniture and shabby hangings, seemed to fasten upon her the imprint of hard usage, as if to revenge itself for her neglect of it by proclaiming aloud, in the privacy of the third-floor back, what she fought with desperate determination to conceal from the critical eyes of the habitues of her perfectly appointed drawing-room.

She pushed away the papers petulantly is her husband entered the room.

"Really, George," she exclaimed irritably, turning toward him, "I don't see how I'm going to meet this additional expense! I've a pile of bills here now that there isn't the least prospect in the world of my ever being able to pay, and some of the people are positively uncivil in their demands. Now, if I have to buy an entire mourning outfit, I don't see where I'm coming out!"

She looked at him in angry reproach.

"Too bad, old girl," returned her husband nonchalantly, sinking into a deep chair by the window and opening the newspaper he held. "But don't blame me — it isn't my fault!"

"Don't be absurd, George! Of course, Randolph's death isn't your fault; but I won't go to the length of saying that our being so strapped isn't!" Her eyes ran impatiently over his relaxed figure. "And I assure you I haven't the slightest intention of going to Newport this summer without the proper wardrobe. If I have to put on mourning — and I suppose I must, or people will talk, and they're doing enough of that as it is — it's got to be of the best. Cheap mourning is impossible; so you'll have to arrange to give me some money. Remember, it's your brother, not mine!"

George Crosby lowered his paper irritably.

"Upon my word, Maude," he exclaimed, "you might show a little feeling! The way you're acting is abominable. One would think Randolph had died on purpose!"

"How do you know he didn't?" rejoined his wife with acerbity. "No one seems to have the faintest idea why he died. Even the doctors can't agree. Half of them say something about his heart, and the rest talk vaguely about a stroke. For my part, I think the disgrace of that Steadfast affair was the cause."

"You mean?"

George Crosby gazed intently at his wife's face, haggard and worn without its customary make-up.

"Oh, George! Why do you make me go into details? You know as well as I that there was something wrong with the horse on Thursday, and it was pretty generally suspected that he had been tampered with. At all events, I saw some of Randolph's most intimate friends cut him dead as he was leaving the grounds, and Randolph was not the sort of man to stand that."

She looked meaningly into her husband's startled face.

"Poor old Rand!"

George Crosby's voice shook. He turned his heavy eyes toward the window and stared, unseeing, at the backs of the houses opposite.

"It's horrid! The whole thing is perfectly abominable!" continued his wife in a tone of extreme exasperation. "Here I've gone to the expense of a complete outfit for the summer — "

Her husband jumped to his feet.

Yes, yes!" he exclaimed irritably. "I'll get you the money somehow; but you'll have to make it go as far as possible."

"Trust me for that!" retorted his wife with a hard little laugh. "Years of training have taught me to get as much out of a dollar as one hundred cents will buy, and maybe a little more, I'm sick of it! I'm tired to death of having to plan and scrimp until even my fingers are beginning to look like claws!" She held out her crooked fingers before him. "How is it that Randolph had plenty of money and could live like a prince, while we've always been pinched to the last degree?"

George Crosby shrugged his shoulders and moved toward the door. It was not the first time the question had been put to him, and it aroused, even now, a feeling of antagonism against the brother whose inheritance had been the same as his own, but who had increased his property tenfold, while George's had steadily dwindled.

"Perhaps an extravagant wife and son have had something to do with it!" he flung back over his shoulder as he lingered on the threshold. "Well, poor Randolph can't enjoy his pile any more. What did you decide about Elizabeth?"

"She's coming to us, of course. She can't live alone, and if I have her under my eye I can perhaps keep away undesirables."

She looked full at her husband, who nodded understandingly.

"Quite right, Maude; the girl's a catch, and is bound to have a lot of attention. Much better to have her here. Will she go with you to Newport?"

"Oh, yes; she needn't go out, and Norman will be there to amuse her. I want the boy to take a good long rest this summer; he looks desperately thin."

"You can't lay that to overwork! replied her husband with a short laugh. Almost the only thing that ever brings him to the office is the urgent need of funds."

"Like father, like son!" murmured his mother. "I never noticed a deep love of work in you, either!"

"Maybe not, but my father wasn't so lenient as Norman's is, and I had to work when I was his age. You can't blame me for wanting to take life a bit easy now." He stretched luxuriously, and a self-indulgent smile widened the full lips. "After all, one only lives once, and at my age there aren't so many years left to enjoy."

Mrs. Crosby shuddered.

I wish you wouldn't everlastingly keep referring to that extremely unpleasant subject. It's positively gruesome! We all have to die some time, of course, but there's no use in perpetually harping on the fact."

Crosby laughed again, lazily.

"Well, I'm off," he said, turning toward the stairs. "I want to get Randolph's affairs straightened out as far as I can before the hot weather comes." He paused once more. "Tell Norman I expect him at twelve — that is, unless it's too early for him," he added with an exaggerated air of concern.

But when Norman finally appeared in his father's office, George Crosby foresaw at once, from the haggardness of the boy's face, what the interview portended. These heated scenes had occurred with increasing frequency since Norman was fifteen, and were to be dreaded even more than the hardly less stormy encounters with the boy's mother.

Norman sank into the deep leather armchair that stood at the corner of his father's writing-table. Swinging one leg over the other, he began nursing his slender, silk-incased ankle.

"I'm in the devil of a hole, dad!" he began moodily,

"You always are, aren't you?" retorted his father, with a scornful look from under his thick eyelids.

Norman laughed uneasily.

"More or less," he admitted; "but this time it's no merry jest!"

"I have never found it so at any time," returned his father coldly.

Norman shifted his position uncomfortably. His bloodshot eyes were wandering about the room; finally they came back to his father's face.

"I've had hard luck," he began with an effort; "deuced hard luck."

"Yes?" George Crosby's tone was hardly encouraging.

Norman's eyes dropped to the Turkish rug which covered the floor.

"Well, what's the demnition total?" asked his father after a pause, attempting a facetiousness which the tone of his voice indicated he was far from feeling.

"Fifty thousand," said the boy desperately.

"Fifty thousand! Good Heavens, boy, are you crazy?"

George Crosby leaned far out of his chair, his hands gripping the arms, his wide eyes for once alight, gazing incredulously into the sullen face before him.

Norman shook his head resentfully.

"Not yet, but I soon shall be, if this keeps on!"

"You — you!" retorted his father, his face ablaze with anger. "You'll have us all, your mother and me included, in the madhouse or in jail — I don't know which! And it's only yourself you stop to think of! Fifty thousand dollars! Do you realize what that means to me?"

The boy's face blanched, and his sullen expression deepened.

How did it happen?" asked his father in a low voice, which he was evidently exerting his utmost will-power to control.

"Playing auction."

"Auction! What stake?"

"Fifty cents."

"Fifty cents a point?" An incredulous look stole over George Crosby's face. "You say you were playing auction for fifty cents a point?" Then, as no answer was vouchsafed, he added, as if to himself: "Just ten times my limit!"

For a moment neither spoke. A tense, living silence wrapped itself about them, which the monotonous hum of the city booming in through the open window seemed to accentuate.

"How do you expect to pay this debt of — er — honor?" queried his father at last, a sneer curling the corners of his mouth.

The boy crouched back in his chair, as if for support, and raised miserable, hunted eyes to his father's grim face.

"I don't know, dad," he whispered huskily, "unless — "

"Unless what?"

Norman swallowed hard. He roused himself from his half-reclining position, and his slender figure suddenly became tense with energy.

"See here, dad!" he began. "I've just heard of a wonderful proposition, perfectly safe, and a dead-sure thing,"

His father looked at him suspiciously from under lowered lids.

"You've told me before of dead-sure things!" he retorted scornfully.

"But this one is absolutely on the level," Norman reiterated. "I happen to know the man who is at the head of it, and he swears that you would double your money in three months. What's more, he proved it to me."

"How?" asked his father laconically.

"It's a rubber company, formed to take over the Belgian interests in the Congo. At present prices rubber is a veritable goldmine, and the demand for it is unlimited. They can't get enough on the other side, and you know how it's gone up here."

The color had come back into the boy's face, and his voice was quick and sharp. George Crosby eyed him in silence.

"How much money does he want?" he asked at last. "Oh, a hundred thousand or so."

"My Heavens, boy! You talk as if I were made of money!"

Norman's eyes dropped from his father's to the writing-table before which he sat. It was strewn with papers. They lingered there for a moment; then he looked back at his father significantly.

"I thought — perhaps," he hesitated, "you might — be willing to invest some — of — Uncle Randolph's money — in it."

George Crosby turned violently toward the boy, who was tensely awaiting the result of his suggestion. "Do you realize that that would be a State's prison offense?" he asked bluntly.

Norman's white face quivered.

"It's probably State's prison if you don't!" be retorted desperately.

"What do you mean?" The question came in a harsh voice strangely unlike George Crosby's usual suave tones.

"I mean this." The boy was evidently goaded to desperation. "I raised the check you gave me for five hundred to fifty thousand to pay Henry Armstrong, and I gave it to him last night."

George Crosby turned slowly back to the writing-table, and his gray head dropped into his hands. Lower and lower it sank until it fell on his outstretched arms, resting on the table.

Again that black silence folded itself about them. Once or twice a deep sigh broke from the bowed figure, and the broad shoulders shuddered.

"Good God!" The words seemed to have been wrung from him in spite of his efforts at restraint. "Good God!"

A frightened look stole over Norman's face.

"Don't, dad, don't!" he whispered huskily, rising and laying a shaking hand on the older man's shoulder.

"Don't touch me!" His father sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing, his drawn face working. "You thief!"

Norman swayed back as if his father had struck him, and a look as of an animal at bay crept into his face.

"You — you call me — that!" he breathed hoarsely. "You! Why, you don't know the meaning of the word honesty! Don't talk to me!" The words were tumbling out of his mouth in a frenzy of anger. "Why, ever since I was a kid I've heard you and mother planning and arranging how you were going to get out of paying your bills! And now you call me a thief!" The young man's voice rose almost to a shriek. "How do you expect me to be honest when I've been brought up never to pay for anything unless I had to?"

"Silence!"

George Crosby raised his hand as if to quell the torrent of words by force, if necessary. For a moment father and son glared angrily into each other's face; then, with a catch in his breath that was almost a sob, the young man's slight figure crumpled up and fell into the chair behind him.

His father sank into his armchair, and his face fell forward on his chest. His eyes, no longer languid, stared vacantly out of his strained, white face at the litter of papers before him. It seemed as if some unseen spirit had cast a spell over him, robbing him forever of the atmosphere of youth which had long been the wonder and envy of his friends.

The consequences of the boy's act loomed dark and sinister over him; his son's words stung him with unanswerable force.

He passed his hands in a dazed way across his eyes, as if attempting to brush away a mist that obscured them, and the papers scattered on the table began to assume shape. Mechanically he stretched out his hand and took up a neat bundle secured by a rubber band. He listlessly read the name on the wrapper.

Once more his head sank forward, and his eyes stared out before him, as if trying to penetrate the granite wall that concealed the future. A hunted look crept into them, and the grip on the packet tightened. He turned his head, but not his eyes, in the direction of the youth cowering in the depths of the big chair.

"You say you know the head of this — er — rubber concern?" he asked coldly.

The tense look on Norman Crosby's face lifted.

"Yes, sir," he answered. "It's Henry C. Hargis."

"Hargis! I know him. If you should happen to run across him, tell him I should like to talk to him."

He turned again to the table.

Norman rose. It seemed as if a heavy weight which had been crushing him had been removed, and he walked quickly to the door. With a backward glance toward the silent figure so absorbed as to be apparently oblivious to his existence, he slipped noiselessly out.