"You are a gentleman, a fine, great-hearted gentleman--"

"With a face like a comic valentine. Even my mother can't say no to that. What woman wants a comic valentine for her lover? Don't you understand now? I can have her friendship now and be with her a little. And I can do little things to help her. I can't risk losing that to seek something she never could give."

"But she could have given it once. I know it. I knew it then, but I wouldn't tell you because I wanted to keep you for myself. He--your friend David--had not come then. You must take the risk for her sake.

And before it is too late."

"But I can't inflict myself on her. It would be no kindness to her or to me." He left her and began to pace back and forth agitatedly, in the pompous, hopping little strut. "You are wrong--you must be wrong.

It is impossible. It would be terrible, tragic even though they are both good. And it would be my fault. I brought them together, thinking she would help make things cheerful for him. . . . Mother, I wish you hadn't put this in my mind! I can't believe it. I won't believe it. He is honorable--"

The blind woman smiled sadly. "It is a thing with which honor or duty or law has nothing to do. And I fear--I fear it is already too late--because I kept silent when I should have opened your eyes."

But Jonathan was not listening. He was seeing the faces of his friends as they had been that evening. The scales were falling from his eyes, an evil black fear entering into his heart.

"Oh, Jonathan, my son--my dear son--"

She held out her hands to him and he went to her and knelt at her side.

And she mothered him, that d.i.n.ky, absurd little man, and he bowed his head on her knee.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW HOUSE

Radbourne & Company was in a daze. And no wonder! For a week the "little boss" had not once beamed, the spirited hop had gone out of his walk, a new querulous note had come into his voice. When a matter went wrong--which, it seemed, happened oftener than usual--he reminded the delinquent of the fact, not gently, but sadly, as though deeply aweary of the frailty of men. Miss Brown confided to Esther that she was well on the way to "nervous prostration." Esther was worried, and wondered what grave mischance could have worked out such a change in Jonathan.

He seemed to avoid both her and David, and when they did meet his manner was constrained and awkward.

It was like chicken-pox and evil gossip and other contagious diseases.

It spread. Gloom hung like a fog over office and shop. No one whistled or hummed at work. Good friends lost their heads and exchanged cutting words. And Hegner, the shop foreman, who had been sober for a year, lost his grip and got drunk. Because he was ashamed and hated himself, his temper was always at half-c.o.c.k.

And Smith--poor Smith, the ex-convict, to whom Jonathan's kindness had been as water on a lame duck's back--had to bear the brunt of Hegner's distemper. He stood it as long as he could; which was not very long.

One noon hour he presented himself, sullen and whining and bleeding at the nose, with a grievance for Jonathan's ears. The latter looked up frowningly from the pile of letters he was signing; they were sadly misspelled, the agitated Miss Brown having been at her worst.

"Yes, Smith," he said wearily. "What is it? A complaint, I suppose?"

"I wants to know," began Smith in a whine, "why I can't git a square deal here. The shop boss he--"

"Is Hegner mixed up in it? Then go bring him here and say what you have to say before him."

Smith departed, to return a few minutes later, an apprehensive eye cast back at the trailing Hegner.

"Now, Smith," said Jonathan, "what is your complaint?"

"The boss he keeps d.a.m.nin' me up an' down all the time," Smith explained. "An' this morning he slugs me--right here on the beak." He laid a gentle finger on the corpus delicti.

"Hegner," inquired Jonathan, "why do you keep d.a.m.ning him up and down all the time? And why did you slug him on the beak?"

"Because," Hegner grinned sheepishly, "his beak was the place most convenient."

"This isn't a joking matter," Jonathan reminded him sharply.

"So it ain't." Hegner turned a glance of contempt on Smith. "He's a b.u.m an' a loafer, He won't learn an' he won't try to work. Why, Braun, who'd ought to be in bed instead of at a lathe, turns out half as much again as him. How can I jack the other men up if I let him lag behind?

An' this morning I told him I'd had enough of his soldierin' an' what I thought he was good for. He hauled off with a steelson to crack me--but I beat him to it. That's all." Hegner blew tenderly on his knuckles.

"Smith," said the judge, "what have you to say to that?"

"'Tain't so. He's only huntin' an excuse to fire me an' give some one else my lathe."

"So I am," Hegner put in grimly. "Some one who'll work an' who ain't an ex--"

"Hegner, hold your tongue!" Jonathan turned to Smith. "I have to believe Hegner, because I've been watching you, Smith. I took you on here, as I told you at the time, not to do you a favor, but because I thought you were in earnest and would justify it. I was willing to be your friend. And you soldiered. You stole the time I paid you for, which is the same as stealing my money. And you stole something else--my trust--which is worth more to me than my money. But I suppose that is something you can't understand."

"I un'erstan's when I ain't wanted," answered Smith, with an ugly laugh. "I'll git my time an' git out."

Then Jonathan's trouble found voice in a sharp querulous outburst.

"Yes, get your time. I'm tired keeping men who won't help themselves."

Smith vanished, and his surly ugly face was only the reflection of the ugliness just then in his heart.

"You, too, Hegner!" Jonathan turned blazing eyes on his foreman.

"You've been drinking again, when you promised me--"

"You ain't more disgusted than me." Big Hegner, ashamed, looked down at his feet. "But I couldn't help it. Honest, I couldn't.

Everything's been goin' wrong here for a week."

Jonathan's outburst ended as suddenly as it began. "I know," he said wearily. "I know."

An hour later David, seeking Jonathan on a matter that was only a pretext, found him idle, elbows on the desk and head propped in his hands. Jonathan looked up listlessly. The matter disposed of, David ventured, uncertainly, because he had learned the last week to remember that he was an employee as well as a friend.

"Mr. Radbourne, are you ill?"

"No."

"I'm afraid something's wrong."

"Something's wrong, David."

"I hope it is something that can be easily mended."

"I'm afraid it can't." Jonathan looked at him queerly. "I'm afraid the damage has been done. Will you please go to the shop and see if Smith is anywhere around?"

David departed, to return with the word that Smith was gone.

"Ah! I'm sorry. I owe him an apology and some amends. A little while ago I lost my temper and did him an injustice, when he needed to be helped. I had no excuse. But it hurts to be disappointed in a man."

Jonathan looked queerly at David again. "In any one, David."