"Son about your age. Matt his name is. Surely you must recall him. Used to pick pease with us when Fay'd let us do it."

Claude shook his head silently.

"And there's a girl."

Claude's stick hung limply before him. His face and figure resumed their stony immobility. "Oh, is there? Plain?"

"No; pretty. Very pretty. Very unusually pretty. Come to think of it, I shouldn't mind saying--Yes, I will say it! She's the prettiest girl I've ever seen." The eyes of the two brothers met. "Bar none."

The smile on Claude's lips might have pa.s.sed for an expression of brotherly chaff. "Go it, old chap. Seem smitten."

"Oh, it isn't that. Nothing of the sort at all. I speak of her only because I'm sorry for her. Brunt of whole thing comes on her."

"Well, what do you propose that we should do?"

"I haven't got as far as proposing. Haven't thought the thing out at all. But I think we ought to do something--you and I."

"We can't do anything without father--and father won't. He simply won't.

Fay'll have to go. Good thing, too; that's what I say. Get 'em all on a basis on which they can manage. Fay'll find a job with one of the other growers--"

"Yes; but what's to become of the girl?"

Claude stared with a kind of bravado. "How the devil do I know? She'll do the best she can, I suppose. Go into a shop. Lots of girls go into shops."

Thor studied his brother with mild curiosity. "You're a queer fellow, Claude. A minute ago you couldn't remember Fay's name; and now you've got his whole business at your fingers' ends."

But Claude repeated his explanation. "Got father's business at my fingers' ends, if that's what you mean. In such big affairs chap like Fay only a detail. Couldn't recall him at first, but once I'd caught on to him--"

By moving away toward the inner office, where Cheever was still at work, Claude intimated that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was ended. Thor returned to his runabout.

"Say, Claude," Cheever called, "comin' to see 'The Champion' to-night, ain't you? Countin' on you."

Claude laid a friendly hand on Cheever's arm. He liked to be on easy terms with his father's clerks. "Awfully sorry, Billy, but you must excuse me. Fact is, that d.a.m.n-fool brother of mine has been putting his finger in my pie. Got to do something to get it out--and do it quick.

Awfully sorry. Sha'n't be free."

CHAPTER IV

Beside his favorite window at the club, commanding the movement of the street and the bare trees of the park, Len Willoughby had got together the essentials to a pleasant hour. They consisted of the French and English ill.u.s.trated papers, two or three excellent Havanas, a bottle of Scotch whisky, and a siphon of aerated water. On the table beside him there was also an empty gla.s.s that had contained a c.o.c.ktail.

It was the consoling moment of the day. After the strain of a nine-o'clock breakfast and the rush to the city before eleven, after the hours of purposeless hanging about the office of Toogood & Masterman, where he could see he wasn't wanted, he found it restful to retire into his own corner and sink drowsily into his cups. He did sink into them drowsily, and yet through well-marked phases of excitement. He knew those phases now; he could tell in advance how each stage would pa.s.s into another.

There was first the comfort of the big chair and the friendly covers of _L'Ill.u.s.tration_ and the _Graphic_. He didn't care to talk. He liked to be let alone. When he came from the office he was generally dispirited.

Masterman's queer, contemptuous manner was enough to discourage any one.

He was sure, too, that Claude and Billy Cheever ridiculed his big, fat figure behind his back. But once he sank into the deep, red-leather arm-chair he was safe. It was ridiculous that a man of his age should come to recognize the advantages of such a refuge, but he laid it to the charge of a mean and spiteful world.

The world did not cease to be mean and spiteful till after he had had his c.o.c.ktail. It was wonderful the change that took place then--not suddenly, but with a sweet, slow, cheering inner transformation. It was a surging, a glowing, a mellowing. It was like the readjustment of the eyes of the soul. It was seeing the world as generous, kindly. It was growing generous and kindly himself, with the happy conviction that more remained to be got out of life than he had ever wrung from it.

Still, it was something to be a rich banker. Every one couldn't be that.

Archie Masterman had certainly possessed a quick eye when he singled out Len Willoughby as the man who could put the firm of Toogood & Masterman on its feet. Three hundred thousand dollars of Bessie's money had gone into that business in 1892, just in time to profit by the panic of 1893.

Lord, how they had bought!--gilt-edged stocks for next to nothing!--and how they had sold, a few years later! Len never knew how much money they made. He supposed Archie didn't, either. There were years when the Stock Exchange had been like a wheat-field, yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold for every seed they had sown. He had never attempted to keep a tally on what came in; it was sufficient to know that there was always plenty to take out. Besides, it had been an understanding from the first that Archie was to do the drudgery. Len liked this, because it left him free--free for summers in Europe and winters in Egypt or at Palm Beach.

By degrees reminiscence tended toward somnolence. And yet it couldn't be said that Len slept. He kept sufficiently awake to put out his hand from time to time and seize the tumbler. He could even brew himself another gla.s.s. If a brother clubman strolled near enough to say, "h.e.l.lo, Len!"

or, "h.e.l.lo, Willoughby!" he could respond with a dull, "h.e.l.lo, Tom!" or, "h.e.l.lo, Jones!" But he spoke as out of a depth; he spoke with some of that weariness at being called back to life which Rembrandt depicts on the face of Lazarus rising from the tomb. It was delicious to sink away from the prosaic and the boresome, to be so fully awake that he could follow the movement in the street and the hopping of the sparrows in the trees, and yet be, as it were, removed, enchanted, seeing and hearing and thinking and even drinking through the medium of a soothing, slumbrous spell.

It could hardly ever be said that he went beyond this point. Though there were occasions on which he miscalculated his effects, they could generally be explained as accidental. Above all, they didn't rise from an appet.i.te for drink. The phrase was one he was fond of; he often used it in condemning a vice of which he disapproved. He used it on this particular afternoon, when Thor Masterman, who had come to drive him homeward in his runabout, was sitting in the opposite arm-chair, waiting to make the start.

"There's one thing about me, Thor--never had an appet.i.te for drink. Not to say _drink_. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it is--bally rot! _You_ know that, Thor, don't you? Appet.i.te for drink something I despise."

Thor considered the moment one to be made use of. "Has father been saying anything about it?"

"No; but he looks it. Suppose I don't know what he means? Sees double, your father does. Anybody'd think, from the way he treats me, that I was a disgrace to the firm. I'd like to know what that firm'd be without me."

Thor tried to frame his next question discreetly. "I hope there's been no suggestion of the firm's doing without you, Mr. Willoughby?"

To this Len gave but an indirect reply. "There'll be one soon, if your father doesn't mind himself. I'll retire--and take my money out.

Where'll he be then?"

Thor felt his way. "You've taken out a good deal already, haven't you?"

"Not any more than belonged to me. You can bet your boots on that."

"No; not any more than belonged to you, of course. I was only thinking that with the splendid house you've built--and its up-keep--and your general expenses--which are pretty heavy, aren't they?--"

"Not any more than belonged to me, Thor. You can bet your boots on that."

The repet.i.tion was made drowsily. The big head of bushy white hair, with its correlative of bushy white beard, swayed with a slow movement that ended in a jerk. It was obvious that the warnings and admonitions to which Thor had been leading up were not for that day. They were useless even when, a half-hour later, the movement of the runabout and the keen air of the high lands as they approached the village roused the big creature to a maudlin cursing of his luck.

On nearing the house, the delicate part of the task which of late Thor had taken almost daily on himself became imminent. It was to get his charge into the house, up to his room, and stretched on a couch without being seen by Lois. Thor had once caught her carrying out this duty unaided. She had evidently called for her father in her mother's limousine, and as Thor pa.s.sed down the village street she was helping the staggering, ungainly figure toward the door. The next day Thor took his runabout from the garage and went on the errand himself. He was also more ingenious than she in finding a way by which the sorry object could be smuggled indoors. The carriage entrance of the house was too near the street. That it should be so was a trial to Mrs. Willoughby, who would have preferred a house standing in grounds, but there never had been any help for it. When money came in it had been Len's desire to buy back a portion of the old Willoughby farm, and build a mansion on what might reasonably be called his ancestral estate. Of this property there was nothing in the market but a snip along County Street; and though he was satisfied with the site as enabling him to display his prosperity to every one who pa.s.sed up and down, his wife regretted the absence of a dignified approach.

By avoiding County Street when he came out from town, and following a road that scrambled over the low hillside till it made a juncture with Willoughby's Lane, by descending that ancient cow-path and bringing Len to the privacy of his side-door, Thor endeavored to keep his father's partner from becoming an object of public scandal. He took this trouble not because he bothered about public scandal in itself, but in order to protect Lois Willoughby.

So far his methods had been successful. They failed to-day only because Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her gloved hands she was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the leafless vine that grew over the pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant he drew up at the steps.

"So good of you to bring papa out from town! I'm sure he's enjoyed the drive." Her hand was on the lever that opened the door of the machine.

"Poor papa! You look done up. I dare say you're not well. Be careful, now," she continued, as he lumbered heavily to his feet. "That's a long step there. Take my hand. I know you must be as tired as can be."

"Dog tired," the father complained, as he lowered himself cautiously.

"Dog's life. Tha's wha' I lead. No thanks for it, either. d.a.m.n!" The imprecation was necessary because he missed his footing and came down with a jerk. "Can't you see I'm gettin' out?" he groaned, peevishly.

"Stan'in' right in my way."

"Better leave him to me," Thor whispered. "I know just what to do with him. One of the advantages of being a doctor."

Willoughby had mind enough to clutch at this suggestion. "Doctor's what I want, hang it all! Sick as a dog. I do' know what'll happen to me some day. Head aches fit to split. Never had appet.i.te for drink. Tha's one good thing about me."