The Dominant Dollar Part 7

Smilingly she returned his injured look fair in the eyes. Still smiling, she watched him as in silence he recrossed slowly to his place.

"Yes, you're right--as usual," he admitted at last. "You do know me.

Apparently all my friends know me, better than I know myself." He shrugged characteristically. "But you haven't answered my question yet.

What do you think of my accepting?"

"I try never to think--about the useless. You won't accept."

"You may be mistaken, may compel me to against my best judgment."

"No, you won't do that. I shan't influence you in the least."

For answer Armstrong stood up, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders square. A minute perhaps he stood so. Once he cleared his throat. He sat down. An instant later he laughed--naturally, in genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I surrender, Elice," he said; "foot, horse, and officers. I can succeed in deceiving myself, easily; but when it comes to you--" He dropped his hands hopelessly. "On the square, though, and between ourselves, do you want me to quit the University and accept this--job? It's a good lead, I realize."

"I'd rather not say either way," slowly. "I repeat that it's useless to disagree, when nothing would be gained."

"Disagree! We never disagree. We never have in all the time we've known each other."

"We've never discussed things where disagreement was probable."

"Maybe that's right. I never thought of it before." A pause. "Has that harmony been premeditated on your part?"

"Unconsciously so, yes. It's an instinct with me, I think, to avoid the useless."

Armstrong stared across the dim light of the porch. Mentally he pinched himself.

"Well, I am dumb," he commented, "and you are wonderful. Let's break the rule, though, for once, and thresh this thing out. I want your opinion on this Graham matter, really. Tell me, please."

"Don't ask me," repeated the girl. "You'd remember what I said--and it wouldn't do any good. Let's forget it."

"Of course I'd remember. I want to remember," pressed the man. "You think I ought to accept?"

A moment the girl hesitated; then she looked him fair.

"Yes," she said simply.

"And why? Tell me exactly why, please? You're not afraid to tell me precisely what you think."

"No, I'm not afraid; but I think you ought to realize it without my putting it in words."

Armstrong looked genuine surprise.

"I suppose I ought--probably it's childishly obvious, but--tell me, Elice."

"To put it selfishly blunt, then, since you insist, I think you ought to for my sake. If an income you can depend upon means nothing in particular to you you might consider what it would mean to me."

Unconsciously the lounging figure of the man in the chair straightened itself. The drawl left his voice.

"Since we have stumbled upon this subject," he said quietly, "let's get to the bottom of it. I think probably it will be better for both of us.

Just what would it mean to you, that five thousand dollars a year?"

"Don't you know, Steve, without my telling you?"

"Perhaps; but I'd rather you told me unmistakably."

As before the girl hesitated, longer this time; involuntarily she drew farther back until she was completely hidden in the shadow.

"What it means to me you can't help knowing, but I'll repeat it if you insist." She drew a long breath. Her voice lowered. "First of all, it would mean home, a home of my own. You don't know all that that means because you're a man, and no man really does understand; but to a woman it's the one thing supreme. You think I've got one now, have had all my life; but you don't know. Father and I live here. We keep up appearances the best we can; we both have pride. He holds his position in the University; out of charity every one knows, although no one is cruel enough to tell him so. We manage to get along somehow and keep the roof tight; but it isn't living, it isn't home. It's a perpetual struggle to make ends meet. His time of usefulness is past, as yours will be past when you're his age; and it's been past for years. I never admitted this to a human being before, but I'm telling it to you because it's true.

We've kept up this--fight for years, ever since I can remember, it seems to me. We've never had income enough to go around. I haven't had a new dress in a year. I haven't the heart to ask for it. Everything I have has been darned and patched and turned until it won't turn again. It isn't poverty such as they have on the East Side, because it isn't frank and open and aboveboard; but it's genteel poverty in the best street of the town: University Row. It's worse, Steve, because it's unadmitted, eternally concealed, hopeless. It isn't a physical hunger, but again a worse one: an artistic hunger. I'm a college graduate with letters on the end of my name when I choose to use them. I've mixed with people, seen the niceties of life that only means can give, couldn't help seeing them; and they're all beyond my reach, even the common ones. If I didn't know anything different I shouldn't feel the lack; but I do know. I'm not even to blame for knowing. It was inevitable, thrust upon me. I'm the hungry child outside the baker's window. I can look and look--and that is all."

The voice ceased. Frankly, unhesitatingly, the face came out of the shadow and remained there.

"I think you understand now what I mean, Steve, unmistakably. I suppose, too, you think me selfish and artificial and horrid, and I shan't deny it. I am as I am and I want things. To pretend that I don't would be to lie--and I won't lie to you whatever happens. I simply won't. We both know what your place in the University means; I perhaps better than you, because I've seen my father's experience. I don't often get bitter, but I come very near it when I look back and think how my mother had to plan and scrimp. I feel like condemning the whole University to the bottomless pit. I suppose Margery Randall would resent it if I told her so, but honestly I pity her; the more so because I've always envied her in a way.

She's not used to denying herself anything, and there's bound to be a reckoning. It's inevitable, and then--I don't like to think of how it will be then. It's a tragedy, Steve, nothing more or less."

Opposite the man sat motionless in his place looking at her. All trace of his usual lounging att.i.tude was absent. He was not even smoking. For almost a full minute after she was done he sat; then he arose abruptly.

This time he did not offer to come over to her.

"So this is the way you feel," he commented at last, slowly. "It's a new phase of you entirely, Elice, that I admit; but at least I'm glad to know it." He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "In plain English, you'd barter my position and ambition gladly for--things. Frankly I didn't think that of you, Elice, before. I imagined I knew you better, knew different."

Responsive, instinctively the girl started to rise. Her breath came quick. Swiftly following came second thought and she sank back, back into the shadow. She said nothing.

A moment the man waited, expecting an answer, a denial, something; when nothing came he put on his hat with meaning deliberation.

"I repeat I'm very glad you told me, though, even if I do have to readjust things a bit." He shrugged his shoulders. Despite the wounded egotism that was urging him on, it was the first real cloud that had arisen on the horizon of their engagement and he was acutely self-conscious. "Rest a.s.sured, however, that I shall consider your point of view before I say yes or no to Graham. Just now--" He halted, cleared his throat needlessly; abruptly, without completing the sentence or giving a backward glance, he started down the walk. "Good-night, Elice,"

he said.

CHAPTER III

PLEASURE

"The trouble with you, Darley," said Armstrong, "is that you took your course in the University in too big doses. You went on the principle that if a little grinding is good for a man a perpetual dig must be a great deal better." He was in the best of humor this Sunday night, and smiled at the other genially. "A college course is a good deal like strychnine.

Taken in small doses over a long period of time it is a great tonic.

Swallowed all at once--you know what happens."

From her place in a big easy chair Elice Gleason watched with interest the result of the badinage, but Roberts himself made no comment.

"You started in," continued Armstrong, "to do six years' work in four--and did it. You were a human grinding machine and you ground very fine, that I'll admit; but in doing so you missed a lot that was more valuable, a lot that while it doesn't make credit figures in the sum total of university atmosphere."

"For instance?" suggested the other, laconically.

"Well, for one thing, you never joined a fraternity. I know," quickly, "that the frats are abused, as every good thing is abused, but fundamentally they're good. When it comes to humanizing a man, rounding him out, which is the purpose of college life, they're just as essential as a course in the sciences."