The Fortune Hunter
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Louis Joseph Vance >> The Fortune Hunter
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"Hardly," he responded, touching a light to the wick and replacing the
chimney. "It's a good deal of a job."
"Yes..."
He replaced the lamp, and in the act of turning toward another caught a
glimpse of the girl's face, pale and drawn, her eyes a trifle reddened.
And with that commonsense departed from him, leaving him wholly a prey
to his impulse of pity. "Oh, thunder!" he told himself, thrusting a
hand into his pocket. "I might as well be broke as the way I am now."
He produced the scanty remains of his "grubstake."
"Miss Graham..."
"Yes?" she asked, wondering.
"Could you get a party dress for thirty-four dollars?"
"Thirty-four dollars!" she faltered.
He discovered what small change he had in his pocket: it was like him
to be extravagant, even extreme. "And fifty-three cents?" he pursued,
with a nervous laugh.
"Heavens!" the girl gasped. "I should think so!"
"Then go ahead!" He offered her the money, but she could only stare,
incredulous. "I'll stake you."
"Oh..._no_, Mr. Duncan," she managed to say.
"Oh, yes!" He tried to catch one of the hands that involuntarily had
risen toward her face in a gesture of wonder. "Please do," he begged,
his tone persuasive, "as a favour to me."
But she evaded him, stepping back. "I couldn't take it; I couldn't
really."
"Yes, you can. Just try it once, and see how easy it is," he persisted,
pursuing.
"No, I can't." She looked up shyly and shook her head, that smile of
her mother's for the moment illuminating her face almost with the
radiance of beauty. "But I--I thank you very much--just the same."
"But I want you to go to that party..."
"You're awful' kind," she said softly, still smiling, "but I don't care
to go, now. I--"
"Don't care to! Why, you were insisting on going, a little while ago."
"Yes," she admitted simply, "I know I was. But ... I've been thinking
over what you said, since then, and I ... I've made up my mind I'd be
out of place there."
"Out of place!" he echoed, thunderstruck.
"Yes. I've concluded I belong here in the store with father." She half
turned away. "And I guess folks is better off if they stay where they
belong...."
She went slowly from the room, and he remained staring, stupefied.
"You never can tell about a woman," he concluded with all the gravity
of an original philosopher.
XV
MANOEUVRES OF JOSIE
Nat didn't go to the Lockwood lawn fete, and did excuse himself on the
plea of being unable to leave the store. I'm afraid the young man had a
faint, fond hope that Josie would be offended; but his excuse was
accepted without remonstrance. And, indeed, it was at that time quite a
reasonable one. Tracey had not been added to the staff, although
business was booming, and Saturday night is, as everyone who has lived
in a Radville knows, the busiest of the week; all the stores keep open
late on Saturday--some as late as eleven--and frequently take in half
the week's income between noon and the closing hour. Duncan really
couldn't be spared; so it's probable that Josie cloaked her
disappointment and comforted herself with the assurance that her
selection of the day had been an error in judgment, of which she would
not again be guilty.
But the party came off, without fail, and that on a wonderful, still,
moonlit night; and everybody voted it a splendid success. The
_Citizen_ in its next issue recorded the event to the extent of a
column and a half of reading matter, called it a social function, and
described the gowns of the leading ladies of society present in
bewildering phrases. I was not invited, but the owner of the paper was,
and his wife wrote the description with the assistance of the entire
editorial and reportorial force, a dictionary and some evil if
suppressed language from the foreman of the composing-room. I read
the proofs with an admiration strongly tinctured with awe, and found
it lacking in one particular only: no mention was made of Roland
Barnette's first open-faced suit.
Roland had ordered it from a clothing-house in Chicago, and it arrived
just in time. Having heard all about it from Roland's own lips (they
dilated upon the matter to Watty the tailor, just beneath my window), I
sort of hung round downtown Saturday evening in the hope of catching
a glimpse of it, and was not disappointed. I was loitering in Graham's
when Roland sauntered nonchalantly in at about a quarter to eight and
called for a pack of "Sweets." Sam served him, and Duncan, happily for
him disengaged at the moment, after one look at Roland retired
precipitately behind the prescription counter--overcome, I judged from
Roland's triumphant smirk, by deepest chagrin. Well, thought I, might
he have been: he could never, by whatever wildest endeavour, have
approximated Roland's splendour.
The coat was bob-tailed (at least, so Watty described it within my
hearing) and curiously double-breasted, caught together at the waist
with a single button, thus revealing a shining expanse of very stiff
shirt-bosom; which creaked, for some reason. With this Roland wore a
ribbed white-silk waistcoat, very brilliant low-cut patent leather
shoes, and white-silk socks. The trousers were strikingly cut, as to
each leg, after the physical configuration of the domestic pear, and
the effect of the whole was measurably enhanced by an opera-hat--one
of those tall and striking contraptions that you can shut up by
pressing gently but firmly upon the human midriff and looking
unconscious, but which is apt to open with a resounding report if
you're not careful... I am glad to be able to report that Roland failed
to commit the solecism of wearing a red string tie; his tie was a
sober black, firmly knotted at the factory. I'm glad too, for the
sartorial honour of Radville, that Roland knew how to wear such
fixin's: that is to say, with an expression of proud defiance.
After he had departed, stepping high, Sam called me behind the counter
to assist in reviving Duncan. We found him leaning upon the counter,
his forehead resting upon a mortar, very red in the face and breathing
stertorously; and when Sam addressed him, to learn what was the matter,
he seemed unable to speak, but choked and beat the air feebly with his
hands. Sam concluded he had swallowed something, and was, I think,
right; he was plainly half strangled, and only recovered after we had
beaten his back severely. Then he refused any explanation, beyond
saying that he was subject to such seizures.
After the party the town's excitement simmered down and subsided; we
had become moderately accustomed to the presence of Duncan in our midst
(strange as this may sound), and for some time nothing happened germane
to the fate of the Fortune Hunter.
On his part, he fell into a routine without the least evidence of
discontent. He was early to rise and early to work, and rarely left the
store save at meal hours and closing-up time. And in the course of our
serene days, I began to notice in him an increasing interest in the
affairs of the church; he seemed to look forward with a not uneager
anticipation to the fixtures of its calendar. He attended with
admirable regularity both morning and evening services, on Sunday, the
mid-weekly prayer-meeting, and Friday evening choir practice. For in
the course of time he had been won over to join the choir, and modestly
discovered to our edification a barytone voice, wholly untrained but
not unpleasing. Mrs. Rogers, our organist, averred his superiority to
Packy Soule, whom he superseded, and was supported in this estimate by
the remainder of the choir, with the exception of Roland Barnette,
who helped with his reedy tenor. Josie Lockwood sang contralto and Bess
Gabriel what we were informed was soprano--only Radville called it a
treble. Tracey Tanner pumped the organ and puffed audibly in the
pauses--a singular testimony to his devotion to Angie Tuthill, who
"just sang" with the others, chiefly because she was Josie's nearest
friend.
I remember that, one Sunday night after evening service, Duncan
confided to me, quite seriously, "that the church thing was getting to
him." He seemed somewhat surprised, to a degree indignant, as if he
suspected religion of having taken an advantage of him in some
roundabout, underhand way.... He wondered audibly what Harry would
think if he could see him now.
He had settled down to a pretty steady correspondence with Kellogg,
chiefly on business matters. Kellogg was investigating old Sam's
burner, and seemed quite impressed with its possibilities. He had
quarrelled with Roland's friend, Burnham, on Duncan's representations,
and ordered him out of the offices of L. J. Bartlett & Company, it
seemed. Later he opened up negotiations with a corporation known as the
Modern Gas Company, I believe, a competitor of Consolidated Petroleum,
and in due course representatives of both concerns came to Radville,
examined the burner, and retired, non-committal. Then Bartlett sent
a requisition for a model, and supplied the funds for making it--thus
demonstrating his confidence. Sam never had such a good time in his
life as when occupied with that model, and in his elation was inspired
to invent two notable improvements on the machine--which were promptly
patented. Then the model was despatched, receipt acknowledged, and
nothing ensued for three or four months. Radville, which had been
watching and wondering with open incredulity and dissatisfaction (this
latter because neither Graham nor Duncan would talk about the matter),
concluded that the whole business had gone up in smoke, said "I told ye
so," and forgot it completely. Roland Barnette, I believe, drove the
last nail in the coffin of our expectations that anything would ever
come of it, by writing to Burnham that Duncan's negotiations had
failed, and inviting him to renew his offer if he thought it worth
while. Presumably he didn't, for Roland received no reply, and told the
town so....
I don't remember just how soon it was, but it was shortly after the
formation of the firm of Graham and Duncan that the young man received
his first invitation to dinner at the Lockwoods'. He accepted, of
course, whether he wanted to or not, for there could be no excuse for
his refusing a Sunday bid, and the Lockwoods made quite an event of
it. The Soules were invited, because they were Araminta Lockwood's
brother and sister-in-law, and the Godfreys came over from Westerly to
grace the board as representatives of the Lockwood strain. Also Ben
Lockwood attended--Blinky's first cousin and senior.
Duncan described the function in a letter to Kellogg as the time of his
young life. Undoubtedly it was in certain respects singular in his
experience. The entire party walked home from church through a hot
August noon, with that air of chastened joy common to a gathering of
relations--an atmosphere of festive gloom and funeral baked meats
painfully enlivened by exhilarating jests from old Ben, who was a
connoisseur of vintages when it came to jokes. Duncan wished
fervently, first that he might expire; secondly, and with greater
intensity of feeling, that they all might die. Minta Lockwood, he felt,
was slowly but expertly greasing him with adulation--as a python
prepares its prey before dining (or is it a python?)--and he knew he
was presently to be swallowed alive.
They dined protractedly. The meal, consisting of baked chicken, mashed
potatoes, boiled onions with cream sauce, boiled beets and green corn,
followed by rhubarb pie and ice cream, was served by an independent,
bony and red-faced specimen of the "help" genus. The atmosphere was
stifling, with the heat of the day thickened by the steam and odour of
cooked food. Duncan was seated consciously beside Josie--a circumstance
of which, in fact, everyone else seemed tolerantly aware. He writhed in
impotent agony, confronted alone by the consciousness he had brought
this thing upon himself: it was a part of his punishment.
At the conclusion of the meal, which endured throughout two
interminable hours, the elder menfolk withdrew to the garden and the
lawn, where they strolled about, sleepy eyes glistening with repletion,
until finally they disappeared, to each his doze. The ladies
foregathered in the parlour, conversing in undertones, with significant
glances and liftings of their eyebrows. Nat was left to Josie, who
conducted him to the side porch, out of sight of everybody, and planted
herself in the baggy hammock there. She was gay, even brilliant within
her limitations, arch, naive, coquettish, shy, petulant, by turns:
animated by a sense of conquest. She supplied the major part of the
conversation, chatting volubly on the thousand subjects she didn't
understand, the dozen she did. In the most ingenuous manner imaginable
she laid herself open to advances, not once, but a score of times; and
when he failed to respond according to the code of Radville, had the
wit to mask her chagrin, did she feel any: very probably she laid his
lack of responsiveness at the door of his shyness (a quality he was
wholly without) and liked him the better for it.
It was on this day that she extracted from him his promise to join the
choir; he acceded through apathy alone.
"I don't care whether you can sing or not," she confessed, with a look.
"But I do want somebody to walk home with me that ... I like."
"That's a nice way of putting it," Duncan considered without emphasis.
"Roland Barnette's always walked home with me, but I think he's just
tiresome."
"Why?" inquired the young man, with some interest.
She averted her head, plucking at the strands of the hammock. "Oh,
_you_ know," she said diffidently.
"Oh?" Nat was enlightened. "Then I'm sorry for Roland."
"Why?"
"I can't blame him, you know." He couldn't help this: the time, the
place, the girl inspired, indeed incited, one to banality.
"Why?" she persisted.
"Oh, _you_ know." He caught the intonation of her previous words
precisely.
She had the grace to blush and hang her head; but he received a
thrilling sidelong glance.
"Ah... aren't you awful to talk that way, Mr. Duncan?"
"Yes," he admitted meekly.
"Then you will join the choir?" she pursued, failing to fathom the
meaning of that humble acquiescence. Any other boy or man of her
acquaintance would have taken her remark as openly provocative.
"Oh, yes," he agreed listlessly.
"I'm so glad..."
He thanked her, but avoided her eye.
"We might's well begin to-night," she suggested presently, with
diffident, downcast eyes.
"What--the choir?" He was startled. "Oh, I couldn't without a
rehearsal--"
"No, I didn't mean that..."
"No?"
"I mean about Roland." She was paying minute attention to the lace
insertion of her skirt. From this circumstance he divined that he was
on dangerous ground, but could not, in his stupidity, understand just
what made it dangerous.
"About Roland--?"
"Yes; I mean... You know what I mean, Mr. Duncan?"
"I assure you I do not, Miss Lockwood."
"About not walking home with him any more. I don't want to. I wish
you'd commence to-night, instead of choir practice night. I'd much
rather walk home with you."
"After evening service, you mean?" She nodded. "It'll be a great
pleasure."
"Really?" She gave him her eyes now.
"Really," he assured her.
"Ah, I don't believe you mean that!"
"But indeed I do...."
It was not until nearly five o'clock that he was given a chance to
escape. He had, even then, to refuse inflexibly an invitation to stay
to supper.
Minta Lockwood--an expansive woman, generously convex--almost
smothered him with appreciation of his thanks. She held his hand in a
large, moist palm and beamed upon him, saying: "Now't you know the way,
Mr. Duncan...."
"Yes," Blinky insisted, blinking roguishly, "drop in any time. Take pot
luck. We're plain people, Mr. Duncan, but allus glad to see our
friends. Drop in any time."
Josie accompanied him to the front gate, where etiquette required him
to linger for a parting chat....
"Good-bye." The girl gave him her hand. "I'm real glad you came--at
last."
"The pleasure has been all mine," insisted the gallant bromide, fishing
the trite phrase desperately from the grey vacuity of his thoughts.
"You won't forget?"
"Forget what?"
"About to-night?"
"Do you imagine I could?..."
Josie returned to the family conclave, to interrupt a symposium on
Duncan's qualities. He was unanimously approved, on every point. She
took no part in the conversation, but listened, aglow with the pride of
triumph, until old Ben chose to observe:
"He seems to've taken a right smart set for Josie."
Then she rose, blushing, and tossed her pretty, pert head. "How you all
do talk!" she cried. "I'm not thinking about Mr. Duncan that way." And
she left the gathering.
"You might's well begin now as later," pursued her, accompanied by
chucklings; and she tossed her head, but wasn't at all displeased, be
sure.
Duncan wrote to Kellogg in his room that night after church: "I don't
want to sound immodest, but it looks as if you were right, old man:
apparently there's nothing to it...
"Probably I should have stayed on for supper, but I couldn't; I should
have choked. As it was, my soul was curdling. Another ten minutes and I
should have jumped down on the lawn and run round the house on all
fours, yapping and foaming at the mouth, and have wound up by
biting old Blinky..
"The worst of it all is, I know I'm ungrateful: I know they mean well.
But why is it that people who mean well almost invariably grate upon
your sensibilities like the screeching of a slate-pencil?
"In this case, I suspect it's a case of when Snob meets Snob. A snob, I
take it, is a fellow who holds himself your superior because he looks
at things in a different way. That counts me a snob in my mental
attitude toward the Lockwoods. I don't understand their conception of
life--wasn't brought up to understand it. And yet I know they're not a
bad sort, though they bore me to death what time I'm not laughing in my
sleeve at them. Blinky, for instance, is an old screw, but he can't
help that; he was born that way; and aside from the fact that money has
made him snobbish toward his neighbours, he's a simple, honest,
square-dealing (according to his lights) old Jasper. He's not snobbish
toward me, because I've got something he admires but can't understand
and never can acquire; but he's a snob of the first water when it comes
to somebody like this old prince I'm working for--Graham--and his
daughter. And so is Josie....
"But I mustn't say mean things about my future spouse, I presume....
That is the great trouble with your infernal scheme, Harry: it seems
to be working like a charm, and now that I've got something to do I'm
not so strong for it as I was. But I gave you my word. ... Only, mind
this: if the rules prescribe a perpetual course of Sunday dinners,
_en famille_, it's going to break down and turn out a natural-born
flivver. There are limits to human endurance, and I'm human, whatever
else I am not...."
XVI
WHERE RADVILLE FEARED TO TREAD
Summer slumbered to its close, a drowsy autumn settled upon our valley,
in which its traditional peace seemed but the more profound. The skies
darkened to an ineffable intensity of blue; the livery of the fields
was changed, green giving place to gold; the woodlands and lower slopes
of our hills flamed with the scarlet of dying sumach, with the russet
and orange and crimson of a foliage making merry against its moribund
to-morrows; a drought parched the land, and our little river lessened
to a mere trickle of water. The daylight hours became sensibly
abbreviated; while they endured they were golden and warm and hazy:
faint veils of purple shrouded the distances. Twilight fell early, its
air sweet with the tang of dead leaves raked into heaping bonfires by
the children of the town. The nights were long and cool, with a hint of
frosts to come. Day dissolved into day almost imperceptibly. ...
Josie Lockwood announced that she was going away to school in New York
for the winter. Pete Willing took the pledge and kept it almost a
month. Will Bigelow secured time-tables and laboriously mapped out his
semi-annually contemplated trip to the East: like the others
destined never to come off. Tracey Tanner went to work for Graham and
Duncan. The _Citizen_ gained eighteen subscribers; four old ones
paid up their accounts. Babies were born, people married and died,
loved and hated, lived in striving or sloth, accomplished or failed.
Roland Barnette paid ostentatious attentions to Bess Gabriel, who
tolerated him simply because she didn't much like Josie; but, blighted
by Josie's supreme indifference, this budding passion drooped and
failed by mutual consent of both parties concerned. Angie Tuthill
became more conspicuously than ever the orb of Tracey's universe.
Duncan walked home with Josie on two weekday evenings and twice on
Sundays, and learned how to play Halma and Parcheesi, as well as how
long to linger at the front gate in the gloaming, saying good-night.
Eight young women of the town set their caps for him, at one time or
another and... set them back again, because he was too blind to see. As
a body they united with the female element in Radville in condemning
Josie for a heartless flirt, and sympathising with Nat, behind his
back, for being so nice and at the same time so easily taken in. Mrs.
Lockwood gave a Bridge party which failed as such because Radville knew
not Bridge; but everybody went and played progressive euchre, instead.
The drug-store prospered in moderation, Sothern and Lee vainly
contesting its conquering campaign. And Duncan grew thoughtful.
One has more time to think unselfishly in Radville than in a great
city, where there's rarely more time than enough to think of one's own
concerns. And Duncan was making time to think about others--notably,
Betty Graham. The girl was, as usual, shy, reticent, reserved; she kept
her thoughts to herself, sharing the most intimate not even with old
Sam, who _would_ talk; but Duncan divined that she was unhappy.
The easier circumstances of the family had provided her with a few
simple frocks, adequate clothing which she had gone without for years,
and with a sufficiency of wholesome and appetising food: with these,
peace of mind should likewise have come to her, and content. But Duncan
thought they hadn't. Relieved, on Tracey's engagement, of any share in
the store service, she had only the housework for herself and father to
occupy her; her associations with the girls of her age were distant and
constrained. Usage wears into tradition in the Radvilles of our land;
even with the young folks this is so; and in Betty's case, the girl had
for so long been "out of it," debarred by her unfortunate circumstances
from participation in the pastimes, pleasures and duties of her
generation, that by common consent, unspoken but none the less
absolute, she remained an outsider. You might say that she relied on
her father alone for companionship. Duncan she avoided, unobtrusively
but with pains; he consorted with those with whom she had nothing in
common, and she would not thrust herself upon him or seem to seek his
notice. Her early suspicion and sullen resentment of his intrusion into
their affairs had vanished; there remained only a gnawing consciousness
that to him she was little or nothing, that his vision ranged above her
humble head. She was not the sort to take this ill; she was reasonable
enough to believe it natural. But she would not willingly intrude upon
his thoughts--who little knew how much she did occupy his leisure
moments.
He saw her go and come, a wistful shadow on the borders of his
occupations, self-contained, a little timid, but at the same time brave
in her own quiet, uncomplaining fashion. And the distant look in those
soft eyes he divined to be one of longing for that which she might not
possess--the advantages that other girls had, socially and
educationally, the pleasures they contrived, the attentions they
received, the thousand and one slight things that make existence life
for a woman. He saw her drooping insensibly day by day, growing a
little paler, a shade more aloof and listless. And he became infinitely
concerned for her.
He told himself he had solved the problem of her disease, but its
remedy remained beyond his reach. The business was doing very well
indeed, but it was still young and must be subjected to as few
financial drains as possible; as it ran, there was an income sufficient
to board, lodge and clothe the three of them, maintain the credit of
the partnership, and now and again admit of a slight but advantageous
addition to the stock or fixtures. Things would certainly be better in
the course of time, but... Kellogg he would not beg another dollar of,
the bank was an equally impossible resource; there wasn't a chance in a
hundred that Lockwood would refuse to accommodate the growing concern
with money in reason, but the concern, individually and collectively,
would never ask it of him. There remained--?
It came to pass that he left the store early one evening, excusing
himself on the plea of some slight indisposition, and lost himself for
the space of two hours. I mean to say, that no one knew where he went
until long after. When he came home some time after ten he told me he
had been for a walk....
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