The Grain Of Dust

D >> David Graham Phillips >> The Grain Of Dust


She began by sympathizing with him for having so much to do--"and father
says you can get through more work than any man he ever knew, not
excluding himself." She was full of tenderness and compliment, of a kind
of love that made him feel as the dirt beneath his feet. She respected
him so highly; she believed in him so entirely. The thought of her
discovering the truth, or any part of it, gave him a sensation of
nausea. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Never had he
seen her more statelily beautiful. If he should lose her! "I'm
mad--_mad_!" he said to himself.

"Josephine is as high above her as heaven above earth. What is there to
her, anyhow? Not brains--nor taste--nor such miraculous beauty. Why do
I make an ass of myself about her? I ought to go to my doctor."

"I don't believe you're listening to what I'm saying," laughed
Josephine.

"My head's in a terrible state," replied he. "I can't think of
anything."

"Don't try to talk or to listen, dearest," said she in the sweet and
soothing tone that is neither sweet nor soothing to a man in a certain
species of unresponsive mood. "This air will do you good. It doesn't
annoy you for me to talk to you, does it?"

The question was one of those which confidently expects, even demands, a
sincere and strenuous negative for answer. It fretted him, this
matter-of-course assumption of hers that she could not but be altogether
pleasing, not to say enchanting to him. Her position, her wealth, the
attentions she had received, the flatteries--In her circumstances could
it be in human nature not to think extremely well of oneself? And he
admitted that she had the right so to think. Still--For the first time
she scraped upon his nerves. His reply, "Annoy me? The contrary," was
distinctly crisp. To an experienced ear there would have sounded the
faint warning under-note of sullenness.

But she, believing in his love and in herself, saw nothing, suspected
nothing. "We know each other so thoroughly," she went on, "that we don't
need to make any effort. How congenial we are! I always understand you.
I feel such a sense of the perfect freedom and perfect frankness between
us. Don't you?"

"You have wonderful intuitions," said he.

It was the time to alarm him by coldness, by capriciousness. But how
could she know it? And she was in love--really in love--not with
herself, not with love, but with him. Thus, she made the mistake of all
true lovers in those difficult moments. She let him see how absolutely
she was his. Nor did the spectacle of her sincerity, of her belief in
his sincerity put him in any better humor with himself.

The walk was a mere matter of a dozen blocks. He thought it would never
end. "You are sure you aren't ill?" she said, when they were at her
door--a superb bronze door it was, opening into a house of the splendor
that for the acclimated New Yorker quite conceals and more than
compensates absence of individual taste. "You don't look ill. But you
act queerly."

"I'm often this way when they drive me too hard down town."

She looked at him with fond admiration; he might have been better
pleased had there not been in the look a suggestion of the possessive.
"How they do need you! Father says--But I mustn't make you any vainer
than you are."

He usually loved compliment, could take it in its rawest form with fine
human gusto. Now, he did not care enough about that "father says" to
rise to her obvious bait. "I'm horribly tired," he said. "Shall I see
you to-morrow? No, I guess not--not for several days. You understand?"

"Perfectly," replied she. "I'll miss you dreadfully, but my father has
trained me well. I know I mustn't be selfish--and tempt you to neglect
things."

"Thank you," said he. "I must be off."

"You'll come in--just a moment?" Her eyes sparkled. "The butler will
have sense enough to go straight away--and the small reception room will
be quite empty as usual."

He could not escape. A few seconds and he was alone with her in the
little room--how often had he--they--been glad of its quiet and
seclusion on such occasions! She laid her hand upon his shoulders, gazed
at him proudly. "It was here," said she, "that you first kissed me. Do
you remember?"

To take her gaze from his face and to avoid seeing her look of loving
trust, he put his arms round her. "I don't deserve you," he said--one of
those empty pretenses of confession that yet give the human soul a sense
of truthfulness.

"You'd not say that if you knew how happy you make me," murmured she.

The welcome sound of a step in the hall give him his release. When he
was in the street, he wiped his hot face with his handkerchief. "And I
thought I had no moral sense left!" he reflected--not the first man, in
this climax day of the triumph of selfish philosophies, to be astonished
by the discovery that the dead hands of heredity and tradition have a
power that can successfully defy reason.

He started to walk back home, on impulse took a passing taxi and went to
his club. It was the Federal. They said of it that no man who amounted
to anything in New York could be elected a member, because any man on
his way up could not but offend one or more of the important persons in
control. Most of its members were nominated at birth or in childhood and
elected as soon as they were twenty-one. Norman was elected after he
became a man of consequence. He regarded it as one of the signal
triumphs of his career; and beyond question it was proof of his power,
of the eagerness of important men, despite their jealousy, to please him
and to be in a position to get the benefit of his brains should need
arise. Norman's whole career, like every career great and small, in the
arena of action, was a derision of the ancient moralities, a
demonstration of the value of fear as an aid to success. Even his
friends--and he had as many as he cared to have--had been drawn to him
by the desire to placate him, to stand well where there was danger in
standing ill.

Until dinner time he stood at the club bar, drinking one cocktail after
another with that supreme indifference to consequences to health which
made his fellow men gape and wonder--and cost an occasional imitator
health, and perhaps life. Nor did the powerful liquor have the least
effect upon him, apparently. Possibly he was in a better humor, but not
noticeably so. He dined at the club and spent the evening at bridge,
winning several hundred dollars. He enjoyed the consideration he
received at that club, for his fellow members being men of both social
and financial consequence, their conspicuous respect for him was a
concentrated essence of general adulation. He lingered on, eating a
great supper with real appetite. He went home in high good humor with
himself. He felt that he was a conqueror born, that such things of his
desire as did not come could be forced to come. He no longer regarded
his passion for the nebulous girl of many personalities as a descent
from dignity. Was he not king? Did not his favor give her whatever rank
he pleased? Might not a king pick and choose, according to his fancy?
Let the smaller fry grow nervous about these matters of caste. They did
well to take care lest they should fall. But not he! He had won thus far
by haughtiness, never by cringing. His mortal day would be that in which
he should abandon his natural tactics for the modes of lesser men. True,
only a strong head could remain steady in these giddy altitudes of
self-confidence. But was not his head strong?

And without hesitation he called up the vision that made him
delirious-and detained it and reveled in it until sleep came.




VIII


The longer he thought of it the stronger grew his doubt that the little
Hallowell girl could be so indifferent to him as she seemed. Not that
she was a fraud--that is, a conscious fraud--even so much of a fraud as
the sincerest of the other women he had known. Simply that she was
carrying out a scheme of coquetry. Could it be in human nature, even in
the nature of the most indiscriminating of the specimens of young
feminine ignorance and folly, not to be flattered by the favor of such a
man as he? Common sense answered that it could not be--but neglected to
point out to him that almost any vagary might be expected of human
nature, when it could produce such a deviation from the recognized types
as a man of his position agitated about such an unsought obscurity as
Miss Hallowell. He continued to debate the state of her mind as if it
were an affair of mightiest moment--which, indeed, it was to him. And
presently his doubt strengthened into conviction. She must be secretly
pleased, flattered, responsive. She had been in the office long enough
to be impressed by his position. Yes, there must be more or less
pretense in her apparently complete indifference--more or less pretense,
more or less coquetry, probably not a little timidity.

She would come down from her high horse--with help and encouragement
from him. He was impatient to get to the office and see just how she
would do it--what absurd, amusing attractive child's trick she would
think out, imagining she could fool him, as lesser intelligences are
ever fatuously imagining they can outwit greater.

He rather thought she would come in to see him on some pretext, would
maneuver round like a bird pretending to flutter away from the trap it
has every intention of entering. But eleven o'clock of a wasted morning
came and she did not appear. He went out to see if she was there--she
must be sick; she could not be there or he would have heard from her. . . .
Yes, she was at her desk, exactly as always. No, not exactly the same.
She was obviously attractive now; the air of insignificance had gone,
and not the dullest eyes in that office could fail to see at least
something of her beauty. And Tetlow was hanging over her, while the
girls and boys grinned and whispered. Clearly, the office was "on to"
Tetlow. . . . Norman, erect and coldly infuriate, called out:

"Mr. Tetlow--one moment, please."

He went back to his den, Tetlow startling and following like one on the
way to the bar for sentence. "Mr. Tetlow," he said, when they were shut
in together, "you are making a fool of yourself before the whole
office."

"Be a little patient with me, Mr. Norman," said the head clerk humbly.
"I've got another place for her. She's going to take it to-morrow.
Then--there'll be no more trouble."

Norman paled. "She wishes to leave?" he contrived to articulate.

"She spoke to me about leaving before I told her I had found her another
job."

Norman debated--but for only a moment. "I do not wish her to leave," he
said coldly. "I find her useful and most trustworthy."

Tetlow's eyes were fixed strangely upon him.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Norman, the under-note of danger but
thinly covered.

"Then she was right," said Tetlow slowly. "I thought she was mistaken. I
see that she is right."

"What do you mean?" said Norman--a mere inquiry, devoid of bluster or
any other form of nervousness.

"You know very well what I mean, Fred Norman," said Tetlow. "And you
ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Don't stand there scowling and grimacing like an idiot," said Norman
with an amused smile. "What do you mean?"

"She told me--about your coming to see her--about your offer to do
something for her father--about your acting in a way that made her
uneasy."

For an instant Norman was panic-stricken. Then his estimate of her
reassured him. "I took your advice," said he. "I went to see for myself.
How did I act that she was made uneasy?"

"She didn't say. But a woman can tell what a man has in the back of his
head--when it concerns her. And she is a good woman--so innocent that
you ought to be ashamed of yourself for even thinking of her in that
way. God has given innocence instincts, and she felt what you were
about."

Norman laughed--a deliberate provocation. "Love has made a fool of you,
old man," he said.

"I notice you don't deny," retorted Tetlow shrewdly.

"Deny what? There's nothing to deny." He felt secure now that he knew
she had been reticent with Tetlow as to the happenings in the cottage.

"Maybe I'm wronging you," said Tetlow, but not in the tone of belief.
"However that may be, I know you'll not refuse to listen to my appeal. I
love her, Norman. I'm going to make her my wife if I can. And I ask
you--for the sake of our old friendship--to let her alone. I've no
doubt you could dazzle her. You couldn't make a bad woman of her. But
you could make her very miserable."

Norman pushed about the papers before him. His face wore a cynical
smile; but Tetlow, who knew him in all his moods, saw that he was deeply
agitated.

"I don't know that I can win her, Fred," he pleaded. "But I feel that I
might if I had a fair chance."

"You think she'd refuse _you_?" said Norman.

"Like a flash, unless I'd made her care for me. That's the kind she is."

"That sounds absurd. Why, there isn't a woman in New York who would
refuse a chance to take a high jump up."

"I'd have said so, too. But since I've gotten acquainted with her I've
learned better. She may be spoiled some day, but she hasn't been yet.
God knows, I wish I could tempt her. But I can't."

"You're entirely too credulous, old man. She'll make a fool of you."

"I know better," Tetlow stubbornly maintained. "Anyhow, I don't care. I
love her, and I'd marry her, no matter what her reason for marrying me
was."

What pitiful infatuation!--worse than his own. Poor Tetlow!--he deserved
a better fate than to be drawn into this girl's trap--for, of course,
she never could care for such a heavy citizen--heavy and homely--the
loosely fat kind of homely that is admired by no one, not even by a
woman with no eye at all for the physical points of the male. It would
be a real kindness to save worthy Tetlow. What a fool she'd make of
him!--how she'd squander his money--and torment him with jealousy--and
unfit him for his career. Poor Tetlow! If he could get what he wanted,
he'd be well punished for his imprudence in wanting it. Really, could
friendship do him a greater service than to save him?

Norman gave Tetlow a friendly, humorous glance. "You're a hopeless case,
Billy," he said. "But at least don't rush into trouble. Take your time.
You can always get in, you know; and you may not get in quite so deep."

"You promise to let her alone?" said Tetlow eagerly.

Again his distinguished friend laughed. "Don't be an ass, old man. Why
imagine that, just because you've taken a fancy to a girl, everyone
wants her?" He clapped him on the shoulder, gave him a push toward the
door. "I've wasted enough time on this nonsense."

Tetlow did not venture to disregard a hint so plain. He went with his
doubt still unsolved--his doubt whether his jealousy was right or his
high opinion of his hero friend whose series of ever-mounting successes
had filled him with adoration. He knew the way of success, knew no man
could tread it unless he had, or acquired, a certain hardness of heart
that made him an uncomfortable not to say dangerous associate. He
regretted his own inability to acquire that indispensable hardness, and
envied and admired it in Fred Norman. But, at the same time that he
admired, he could not help distrusting.

Norman battled with his insanity an hour, then sent for Miss Hallowell.

The girl had lost her look of strength and vitality. She seemed frail
and dim--so unimportant physically that he wondered why her charm for
him persisted. Yet it did persist. If he could take her in his arms,
could make her drooping beauty revive!--through love for him if
possible; if not, then through anger and hate! He must make her feel,
must make her acknowledge, that he had power. It seemed to him another
instance of the resistless fascination which the unattainable, however
unworthy, has ever had for the conqueror temperament.

"You are leaving?" he said curtly, both a question and an affirmation.

"Yes."

"You are making a mistake--a serious mistake."

She stood before him listlessly, as if she had no interest either in
what he was saying or in him. That maddening indifference!

"It was a mistake to tattle your trouble to Tetlow."

"I did not tattle," said she quietly, colorlessly. "I said only enough
to make him help me."

"And what did he say about me?"

"That I had misjudged you--that I must be mistaken."

Norman laughed. "How seriously the little people of the world do take
themselves!"

She looked at him. His amused eyes met hers frankly. "You didn't mean
it?" she said.

He beamed on her. "Certainly I did. But I'm not a lunatic or a wild
beast. Do you think I would take advantage of a girl in your position?"

Her eyes seemed to grow large and weary, and an expression of experience
stole over her young face, giving it a strange appearance of
age-in-youth. "It has been done," said she.

How reconcile such a look with the theory of her childlike innocence?
But then how reconcile any two of the many varied personalities he had
seen in her? He said: "Yes--it has been done. But not by me. I shall
take from you only what you gladly give."

"You will get nothing else," said she with quiet strength.

"That being settled--" he went on, holding up a small package of papers
bound together by an elastic--"Here are the proposed articles of
incorporation of the Chemical Research Company. How do you like the
name?"

"What is it?"

"The company that is to back your father. Capital stock, twenty-five
thousand dollars, one half paid up. Your father to be employed as
director of the laboratories at five thousand a year, with a fund of ten
thousand to draw upon. You to be employed as secretary and treasurer at
fifteen hundred a year. I will take the paid-up stock, and your father
and you will have the privilege of buying it back at par within five
years. Do you follow me?"

"I think I understand," was her unexpected reply. Her replies were
usually unexpected, like the expressions of her face and figure; she was
continually comprehending where one would have said she would not, and
not comprehending where it seemed absurd that she should not. "Yes, I
understand. . . . What else?"

"Nothing else."

She looked intently at him, and her eyes seemed to be reading his soul
to the bottom.

"Nothing else," he repeated.

"No obligation--for money--or--for anything?"

"No obligation. A hope perhaps." He was smiling with the gayest good
humor. "But not the kind of hope that ever becomes a disagreeable demand
for payment."

She seated herself, her hands in her lap, her eyes down--a lovely
picture of pensive repose. He waited patiently, feasting his senses upon
her delicate, aromatic loveliness. At last she said:

"I accept."

He had anticipated an argument. This promptness took him by surprise. He
felt called upon to explain, to excuse her acceptance. "I am taking a
little flyer--making a gamble," said he. "Your father may turn up
nothing of commercial value. Again the company may pay big----"

She gave him a long look through half-closed eyes, a queer smile
flitting round her lips. "I understand perfectly why you are doing it,"
she said. "Do you understand why I am accepting?"

"Why should you refuse?" rejoined he. "It is a good business prop----"

"You know very well why I should refuse. But--" She gave a quiet laugh
of experience; it made him feel that she was making a fool of him--"I
shall not refuse. I am able to take care of myself. And I want father to
have his chance. Of course, I shan't explain to him." She gave him a
mischievous glance. "And I don't think _you_ will."

He contrived to cover his anger, doubt, chagrin, general feeling of
having been outwitted. "No, I shan't tell him," laughed he. "You are
making a great fool of me."

"Do you want to back out?"

What audacity! He hesitated--did not dare. Her indifference to him--her
personal, her physical indifference gave her the mastery. His teeth
clenched and his passion blazed in his eyes as he said: "No--you witch!
I'll see it through."

She smiled lightly. "I suppose you'll come to the offices of the
company--occasionally?" She drew nearer, stood at the corner of the
desk. Into her exquisite eyes came a look of tenderness. "And I shall be
glad to see you."

"You mean that?" he said, despising himself for his humble eagerness,
and hating her even as he loved her.

"Indeed I do." She smiled bewitchingly. "You are a lot better man than
you think."

"I am an awful fool about you," retorted he. "You see, I play my game
with all my cards on the table. I wish I could say the same of you."

"I am not playing a game," replied she. "You make a mystery where there
isn't any. And--all your cards aren't on the table." She laughed
mockingly. "At least, you think there's one that isn't--though, really,
it is."

"Yes?"

"About your engagement."

He covered superbly. "Oh," said he in the most indifferent tone. "Tetlow
told you."

"As soon as I heard that," she went on, "I felt better about you. I
understand how it is with men--the passing fancies they have for
women."

"How did you learn?" demanded he.

"Do you think a girl could spend several years knocking about down town
in New York without getting experience?"

He smiled--a forced smile of raillery, hiding sudden fierce suspicion
and jealousy. "I should say not. But you always pretend innocence."

"I can't be held responsible for what you read into my looks and into
what I say," observed she with her air of a wise old infant. "But I was
so glad to find out that you were seriously in love with a nice girl up
town."

He burst out laughing. She gazed at him in childlike surprise. "Why are
you laughing at me?" she asked.

"Nothing--nothing," he assured her. He would have found it difficult to
explain why he was so intensely amused at hearing the grand Josephine
Burroughs called "a nice girl up town."

"You are in love with her? You are engaged to her?" she inquired, her
grave eyes upon him with an irresistible appeal for truth in them.

"Tetlow didn't lie to you," evaded he. "You don't know it, but Tetlow is
going to ask you to marry him."

"Yes, I knew," replied she indifferently.

"How? Did he tell you?"

"No. Just as I knew you were not going to ask me to marry you."

The mere phrase, even when stated as a negation, gave him a sensation of
ice suddenly laid against the heart.

"It's quite easy to tell the difference between the two kinds of
men--those that care for me more than they care for themselves and those
that care for themselves more than they care for me."

"That's the way it looks to you--is it?"

"That's the way it is," said she.

"There are some things you don't understand. This is one of them."

"Maybe I don't," said she. "But I've my own idea--and I'm going to stick
to it."

This amused him. "You are a very opinionated and self-confident young
lady," said he.

She laughed roguishly. "I'm taking up a lot of your time."

"Don't think of it. You haven't asked when the new deal is to begin."

"Oh, yes--and I shall have to tell Mr. Tetlow I'm not taking the place
he got for me."

"Be careful what you say to him," cautioned Norman. "You must see it
wouldn't be well to tell him what you are going to do. There's no reason
on earth why he should know your business--is there?"

She did not reply; she was reflecting.

"You are not thinking of marrying Tetlow--are you?"

"No," she said. "I don't love him--and couldn't learn to."

With a sincerely judicial air, now that he felt secure, he said: "Why
not? It would be a good match."

"I don't love him," she repeated, as if that were a sufficient and
complete answer. And he was astonished to find that he so regarded it,
also, in spite of every assault of all that his training had taught him
to regard as common sense about human nature.

"You can simply say to Tetlow that you've decided to stay at home and
take care of your father. The offices of the company will be at your
house. Your official duties practically amount to taking care of your
father. So you'll be speaking the truth."

"Oh, it isn't exactly lying, to keep something from somebody who has no
right to know it. What you suggest isn't quite the truth. But it's near
enough, and I'll say it to him."

His own view of lying was the same as that she had expressed. Also, he
had no squeamishness about saying what was in no sense true, if the
falsehood were necessary to his purposes. Yet her statement of her code,
moral though he thought it and eminently sensible as well, lowered her
once more in his estimation. He was eager to find reason or plausible
excuse for believing her morally other and less than she seemed to be.
Immediately the prospects of his ultimate projects--whatever they might
prove to be--took on a more hopeful air. "And I'd advise you to have
Tetlow keep away from you. We don't want him nosing round."

"No, indeed," said she. "He is a nice man, but tiresome. And if I
encouraged him ever so little, he'd be sentimental. The most tiresome
thing in the world to a girl is a man who talks that sort of thing when
she doesn't want to hear it--from him."