The Main Chance Part 7

It gave Evelyn a pleasant sensation to find herself again in the little Whipple parlor. The furniture was the same that she remembered of old in the commandant's house at the fort. It had at last found repose, for the Whipples' marching days were over. They made an effort to have an Indian room, where they kept their books, but they refrained from calling the place a library. On the walls were the headdress of a Sioux chief, and a few colored photographs of red men; the couch was covered with a Navajo blanket, and on the floor were wolf and bear skins. When chairs were needed for callers, the general brought them in from other rooms; he himself sat in a canvas camp chair, which he said was more comfortable than any other kind, but which was p.r.o.ne to collapse under a civilian.

The wastepaper-basket by the general's table, and a basket for fire-wood were of Indian make, dyed in dull shades of red and green.

"My dear child," Mrs. Whipple began, when Evelyn had explained her errand; "this is a very pretty compliment they're paying you,--don't you know that?"

"Yes, but I don't want it," declared the girl, with emphasis.

"That is wholly unreasonable. There are girls in Clarkson that could not afford to take it; the strength of your position is that you can afford to do it! It's not going to injure you in any way; can't you see that?

Everybody knows all about you,--that you naturally wouldn't want it.

Why, there's that Margrave girl, whose father does something or other in one of the railways,--she had this honor that is worrying you two years ago, and her father and all his friends worked hard to get it for her."

Evelyn laughed at her friend's earnestness. "I'm afraid you're trying to lift this to an impersonal plane, but I'm considering myself in this matter. I simply don't want to be mixed up in that kind of thing."

"These business men work awfully hard for all of us," Mrs. Whipple continued. "It seems to me that their daily business contests and troubles are fiercer than real wars. I'd a lot rather take my chances in the army than in commercial life,--if I were doing it all over again,--that is, from the woman's side. The government always gives us our bread if it can't supply the b.u.t.ter; and if the poor men lose a fight they are forgiven and we still eat. But in the business battle--"

she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the sorry plight of the vanquished.

"Yes, I suppose that's all true," Evelyn conceded. "But you mustn't be so abstract! I really haven't a philosophical mind. I came here to ask you to tell me how to get out of this, but you seem to be urging me in!"

Mrs. Whipple rallied her forces while she poured the iced tea which a maid had brought.

"We can't always have our 'ruthers.' Now this looks like a very large sacrifice of comfort and dignity to you. I'll grant you the discomfort, but not any loss of dignity. If you were vain and foolish, I'd take your side, just to protect you, but you have no such weaknesses. You must not consider at all that girls in Eastern cities don't do such things; that's because there aren't the things to do. Our great-grandchildren won't be doing them either. But these carnivals, and things like that, are necessary evils of our development. Army people like ourselves, who have always been cared for by a paternal government, can hardly appreciate the troubles of business people; and a girl like you, who has always led a carefully sheltered life, with both comforts and luxuries given her without the asking, must try to appreciate the fact that everybody is not so fortunate. I don't know whether these affairs are really of any advantage to the town commercially; I have heard business men say that they are not; but so long as they have them, the rest of us have got to submit to the confetti throwers and the country bra.s.s bands, on the theory that it's good for the town."

Mrs. Whipple covered all the ground when she talked. She had daringly addressed department commanders in this ample fas.h.i.+on when her husband was only a second lieutenant, and she was not easily driven from her position.

"But what's good for the town isn't necessarily good for me," pleaded Evelyn. Her animation was becoming, and Mrs. Whipple was noting the points of the girl's beauty with delight. "Any other girl's clothes would look just as sweet to the mult.i.tude," Evelyn a.s.serted.

"That's where you are mistaken. If it's a sacrifice, the town is offering Iphigenia, and only our fairest daughter will do. I'll be talking fine language in a minute, and one of us will be lost." She laughed; Mrs. Whipple always laughed at herself at the right moment. She said it discounted the pleasure other people might have in laughing at her. "Now Evelyn Porter, you're a nice girl and a sensible one. So far as you can see you're going to spend your days in this town, and it isn't a bad place. We preferred to live here after the general retired because we liked it, and that was when we had the world to choose from.

I've lived in every part of this country, but the people in this region are simple and honest and wholesome, and they have human hearts in them, and at my age that counts for a good deal. The general and I were both born in Ma.s.sachusetts, where you hear a lot about ancestors and background; but I've driven over these plains and prairies in an army ambulance, since before the Civil War, and it hasn't all been fun, either; I love every mile of the country, and I don't want you, who are the apple of my eye, to come home with patronizing airs--"

"Not guilty!" exclaimed Evelyn throwing up her hands in protest. "I have no such ideas and you know it; but you ignore the point. What I can't see is that there's any question of patriotism in this Knights of Midas affair, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not so young as I was. The queen of the ball should be much younger than I am."

"Well, if you're reduced to that kind of argument, I think we'll have to call the debate closed. But remember,--you're asked to give only an hour of your life to please your father, and a great many other people. And you'll be doing your town a great service, too."

"Well," said Evelyn dolefully, as she got up to go, "this isn't the kind of counsel I came for. If I'd expected this from you, I'd have taken my troubles elsewhere." She had risen and stood swinging her parasol back and forth and regarding the tip of her boot. "You almost make it seem right."

"You'd better make a note of it as one of those things that are not pleasant, but necessary. If I thought it would harm you, child, I'd certainly warn you against it--I'd do that for your mother's sake."

"I like your saying that," said Evelyn, softly.

Mrs. Whipple had been a beauty in the old army days, and was still a handsome woman. She had retained the slenderness of her girlhood, and the hot suns and blighting winds of the plains and mountains had dealt gently with her. She took both of Evelyn's hands at the door, and kissed her.

"Don't go away hating me, dear. Come up often; and after it's all over, I'll tell you how good you've been."

"Oh, I'll go to a convent afterward," Evelyn answered; "that is, if I find that you've really persuaded me!"

CHAPTER VI

A SAFE MAN

James Wheaton was thirty-five years old, and was reckoned among the solid young business men of Clarkson. He had succeeded far beyond his expectations and was fairly content with the round of the ladder that he had reached. He never talked about himself and as he had no intimate friends it had never been necessary for him to give confidences. His father had been a harness-maker in a little Ohio town; he and his older brother were expected to follow the same business; but the brother grew restless under the threat of enforced apprentices.h.i.+p and prevailed on James to run away with him. They became tramps and enjoyed themselves roaming through the country, until finally they were caught stealing in a little Illinois village and both were arrested.

James was discharged through the generosity of his brother in taking all the blame on himself; the older boy was sent to a reformatory alone.

James then went to Chicago, where he sold papers and blacked boots for a year until he found employment as a train boy, with a company operating on various lines running out of Chicago. This gave him a wide acquaintance with western towns, and incidentally with railroads and railroad men. He grew tired of the road, and obtained at Clarkson a position in the office of Timothy Margrave, the general manager of the Transcontinental, which, he had heard, was a great primary school for ambitious boys.

It was thus that his residence in Clarkson was established. He attended night school, was a.s.siduous in his duties, and attained in due course the dignity of a desk at which he took the cards of Margrave's callers, indexed the letter books and copied figures under the direction of the chief clerk. After a year, hearing that one of the Clarkson National Bank's messengers was about to resign, he applied for this place.

Margrave recommended him; the local manager of the news agency vouched for his integrity, and in due course he wended the streets of Clarkson with a long bill-book, the outward and visible sign of his position as messenger. He was steadily promoted in the bank and felt his past receding farther and farther behind him.

When, at an important hour of his life, Wheaton was promoted to be paying teller, he was in the receiving teller's cage. He had known that the more desirable position was vacant and had heard his fellow clerks speculating as to the possibility of a promotion from among their number. Thompson, the cas.h.i.+er, had a nephew in the bank; and among the clerks he was thought to have the best chance. They all knew that the directors were in session, and several whose tasks for the day were finished, lingered later than was their wont to see what would happen.

Wheaton kept quietly at his work; but he had an eye on the door of the directors' room, and an ear that insensibly turned toward the annunciator by which messengers were called to the board room. It rang at last, and Wheaton wiped his pen with a little more than his usual care as he waited for the result of the summons. This was on his twenty-fifth birthday.

"Mr. Wheaton!" The other clerks looked at one another. The question that had been uppermost with all of them for a week past was answered.

Thompson's nephew slammed his book shut and carried it into the vault.

Wheaton put aside the balance sheet over which he had been lingering and went into the directors' room. There had been no note of joy among his a.s.sociates. He knew that he was not popular with them; he was not, in their sense, a good fellow. When they rushed off after hours to the ball games or horse races, he never joined them. When their books did not balance he never volunteered to help them. As for himself, he always balanced, and did not need their help; and they hated him for it. This was his hour of triumph, but he went to his victory without the cheer of his comrades.

He heard Mr. Porter's question as to whether he felt qualified to accept the promotion; and he sat patiently under the inquiries of the others as to his fitness. It required no great powers of intuition to know that these old men had already appointed him; that if they had not known to their own satisfaction that he was the best available man, they would not be taking advice from him in the matter.

"Sanders leaves on Monday to take another position, and we will put you in his cage to give you a trial," the president said, finally. Wheaton expressed his grat.i.tude for this mark of confidence. He was not troubled by the suggestion of a trial. Porter and Thompson, the cas.h.i.+er, always spoke of his promotions as "trials." He had never failed thus far and his self-confidence was not disturbed by the care these men always took to tie strings to everything they did with a view to easy withdrawal, if the results were not satisfactory. The position had been filled and there was nothing more to be said. Thompson, however, always liked to have a last word.

"Wheaton, your family live here, don't they?"

"No," said Wheaton, smiling his difficult smile, "I haven't any family.

My parents are dead. I came here from Ohio, and board over on the north side."

"Another Ohio man," said Porter, "you can't keep 'em down." They all laughed at Porter's joke and Wheaton bowed himself out under cover of it.

Later, when need arose for creating the position of a.s.sistant cas.h.i.+er, it was natural that the new desk should be a.s.signed to Wheaton. He was faithful and competent; neither Porter nor Thompson had a son to install in the bank; and, as they said to each other and to their fellow directors, Wheaton had two distinguis.h.i.+ng qualifications,--he did his work and he kept his mouth shut.

In the course of time Thompson's health broke down and the doctors ordered him away to New Mexico, and again there seemed nothing to do but to promote Wheaton. Thompson wished to sell his stock and resign, but Porter would not have it so; but when, after two years, it was clear that the cas.h.i.+er would never again be fit for continuous service in the bank, Wheaton was duly elected cas.h.i.+er and Thompson was made vice-president.

Wheaton had now been in Clarkson fifteen years, and he was well aware that other young men, with influential connections, had not done nearly so well as he. He treasured no illusions as to his abilities; he did not think he had a genius for business; but he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that such qualities as he possessed,--industry, sobriety and obedience,--brought results, and with these results he was well satisfied. He hoped some day to be rich, but he was content to make haste slowly. He never speculated. He read in the newspapers every day of men holding responsible positions who embezzled and absconded, but there was never any question in his mind as between honesty and knavery.

It irritated him when these occurrences were commented on facetiously before him; he did not relish jokes which carried an implication that he too might belong to the dubious cas.h.i.+er cla.s.s; and inquiries as to whether he would spend his vacation in Canada or, if it were winter, in Guatemala, were not received in good part, for he had much personal dignity and little humor. He was counted among the older men of the town rather than among men of his own age, and he found himself much more at ease among his seniors. The young men appreciated his good qualities and respected him; but he felt that he was not one of them; socially, he was voted very slow, and there was an impression abroad that he was stingy.

Certainly he did not spend his money frivolously, and he never had done so. Many fathers held him up as an example to their sons, and this tended further to the creation of a feeling among his contemporaries that he was lacking in good fellows.h.i.+p.

Raridan knew the personal history of most of his fellow townsmen, and he was fond of characterizing those whom he particularly liked or disliked, for the benefit of his friends. He took it upon himself to sketch Wheaton for John Saxton's benefit in this fas.h.i.+on.

"Jim Wheaton's one of those men who never make mistakes," said Raridan, with the scorn of a man whose own mistakes do not worry him. "He went into that bank as a boy, and was first a model messenger, and then a model clerk; and when they had to have a cas.h.i.+er there was the model a.s.sistant, who had been a model everything else, so they put him in.

There wasn't anybody else for the job; and I guess he's a good man for it, too. A bank cas.h.i.+er doesn't dare to make mistakes; and as Wheaton is not of that warm, emotional nature that would lead him to lend money without getting something substantial to hold before the borrower got away, he's the model cas.h.i.+er. You've heard of those bank cas.h.i.+ers who can refuse a loan to a man and send him out of the bank singing happy chants. Well, Jim isn't that kind. When he turns down a man, the man doesn't go on his way rejoicing. I don't know how much money Wheaton's got. He's made something, of course, and Porter would probably sell him stock up to a certain point. He'll die rich, and n.o.body, I fancy, will ever be any gladder because he's favored this little old earth with his presence."

As a bank clerk the teller's cage had shut Wheaton off from the world.

Young women of social distinction who came sometimes to get checks cashed, knew him as a kind of automaton, that looked at both sides of their checks and at themselves, and then pa.s.sed out coin and paper to them; they saw him nowhere else, and did not bother themselves about him. After his promotion to be a.s.sistant cas.h.i.+er, he saw the world closer at hand. He had a desk and could sit down and talk to the men whom he had studied from the cage for so long. The young women, too, approached him no longer with checks to be cashed, but with little books in which they urged him officially and personally to subscribe to charities. Porter, who was naturally a man of generous impulses, knew his own weakness and made the cas.h.i.+er the bank's almoner. He was very sure that Wheaton would be as careful of the bank's money as of his own; he had taken judicial knowledge of the fact that Wheaton's balance on the bank's books had shown a marked and steady growth through all the years of his connection with it.

Wheaton's promotion to the cas.h.i.+ers.h.i.+p had come in the spring; and shortly afterward he had changed his way of living in a few particulars.

He had lodged for years in a boarding house frequented by clerks; a place where his fellow boarders were, among others, a music teacher, a milliner and the chief operator of the telephone exchange. He had not felt above them; their dancing cla.s.s and occasional theater party had seemed fine to him. Porter now suggested that Wheaton should be a member of the Clarkson Club, and Wheaton a.s.sented, on the president's representation that "it would be a good thing for the bank." Vacant apartments were offered at this time in The Bachelors', as it was called, and he availed himself of the opportunity to change his place of residence. He had considered the matter of taking a room at the club, but this, after reflection, he rejected as unwise. The club was a new inst.i.tution in the town, and he was aware that there were conservative people in Clarkson who looked on it as a den of iniquity,--with what justification he did not know from personal experience, but he had heard it referred to in this way at the boarding house table. He knew Raridan and the others at The Bachelors', but his acquaintance with them was of a perfunctory business character. When he moved to The Bachelors', Raridan, who was always punctilious in social matters, formally called on him in his room, as did also Captain Wheelock, the army officer then stationed in Clarkson on recruiting service. The others in the house welcomed him less formally as they chanced to meet him in the hall or on the stairway; they were busy men who worked long hours and did not bother themselves about the amenities and graces of life.

His change to The Bachelors' was of importance to Wheaton in many ways.