V 111 11 it George Horace Lorimer in III Illlli llUlli ill 3 1822 01268 3405 Jack Spurlock-Prodigal By GEORGE HORACE LORIMER Author of "Old Gorgon Graham" and "Letters from a Self-made Merchant to His Son." Illustrated by F. R, GRUGER New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1907, ipo8, BY GEORGE HORACE LORIMER COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED, MAY, 1908 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL TO A. V. L. WHO FINDS SOME GOOD IN JACK PEOPLE IN THE BOOK JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL. JONAS SPURLOCK. The father of Jack. President of Consolidated Groceries; possessor of a rail road, and a member of "The System." MAJOR GEORGE MAGOFFIN JACKSON. Lately a soldier of the Confederacy; now a soldier of Fortune and an implacable foe of "the Hell hounds of the System." ANITA GREY. The daughter of poor, but very smart parents, who are trying to make ends meet on the income of a million in a set where the million should be the income. LORD FROTHINGHAM. An American nobleman. Miss ROBY. A Southern lady of the old school. JIM DURHAM. An advertising man of the new school. HANDY. A "square" gambler. RAWDEN. President of the Trouble Trust. Also introducing a Dancing Bear; a Teddy-bear; various members of the New and of the Old Rich; of the Worthy and of the Unworthy Poor. vu CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. In which the Prodigal Introduces Himself ..... 3 II. In which the Prodigal Describes His Life in the Galleys . . .22 III. In which the Prodigal Gives the Governor the Direct Command . 38 IV. In which the Prodigal Meets the Most Beautiful One . . . -63 V. In which the Prodigal Reaches the Last Ditch . . . -83 VI. In which the Prodigal Meets a Benev olent Old Gentleman . . 107 VII. In which the Prodigal Has a Surpris ing Adventure . . . . 134 VIII. In which the Prodigal Spends a Pleasant Evening . . .168 IX. In which the Prodigal Goes to the Rescue of Beauty in Distress . .189 X. In which the Prodigal Helps Collect a Little Bill 235 XI. In which the Prodigal Gets a Job . 260 XII. In which the Prodigal Goes Home . 296 ILLUSTRATIONS She sniffed and sat down on it . Frontispiece " I tink I puy mein groceries from a house dot haf young mans mit respegdt for deir gustomers" . . . . . 36 "Nevermind all that, Jack" . . -44 "Stop that strike, Dad!" . . -54 "An' when she asked fo' a place in the May day Dance, the insultin' hound of a manager allowed that she could be the May-pole" 136 I had a sickening certainty that the Major would furnish the corpse . . .184 "An exceedin'ly nutritious and gentlemanly repast" ...... 236 I 've dined with them when Lord Strathmore's old butler passed the poulet rbti as if he were handing around a platter of insults . 268 JACK SPURLOCK-PRODIGAL JACK SPURLOCK- PRODIGAL CHAPTER I IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL INTRODUCES HIMSELF MY EXPULSION from Harvard came as a complete surprise to me, though I had rather expected to be dropped for low stand and was working three tutors to the bone, trying to move up a few parasangs to the position of foot of my class. But I was ruled off the course before I could achieve my proud ambition. It 's rather a satisfaction, now that I look back on it, to think that, even if I did do some things of which I 'm ashamed, I helped three deserving young chaps to work their way through college. When my case came up before the faculty, it was horse and horse between the professors who wanted to drop me for low stand and those who wanted to expel me for high jinks. Prexy compromised it in his usual tactful way by drop ping me first and expelling me afterward lifted me out with a drop kick. He was awfully nice about it expressed his regret with just the proper shade of disapproval of me in his voice, 3 4 JACK SPURLOCK - PRODIGAL and presented me with the Citrus Limonum done up in such choice language that I felt as if it were more than I should accept from a compara tive stranger, but when I got outside and took the wrappings off, I found that he had handed me the lemon just the same. When it comes to beautiful thoughts, baked to a crisp brown in hot air, Prexy is the Savarin of the human intellect. It 's rather curious, when one stops to think of it, that a professor should chide a fellow for low stand. He 's like a dentist I knew once, who thoughtlessly kicked on the bad breaths of his patients, without stopping to reflect that the worse the breath the more business for him. They really had no right to expel me. [I was simply an innocent bystander, a looker-on in Vienna, the victim of a cruel misunderstanding, though I was n't able to make anyone believe it. It all began one afternoon when I jumped out of bed with my merry morning face, and opened the bathroom door. I shut it quick be tween me and trouble. For there by the tub, licking up a cake of tar soap, stood a large black bear, with boxing-gloves on her forepaws and a shy, sweet, Diana-surprised-at-the-bath ex pression on her face. Psychology was one of my favourite studies, and I noticed with a shock of surprise that, all recorded experience to the JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 5 contrary, I did not feel that this was the time to swear off. Instead, I reached behind my set of Emerson and took a mild snort. And I decided that some day, after I had had more of my share, I should write a monograph on these phenomena. A moment's reflection convinced me that this was no great moral lesson. The way in which the bear was getting the taste of the night before out of her muzzle with a tar-soap shampoo settled that. But why the mitts ? And why a bear at all ? Why not a cow with red stockings ? It was a knotty one, so I took another, and settled down to see if I could find out just where Ursus minor had butted into my quiet, studious life. The night before had begun with money from home. It had come by way-train in re sponse to a special-delivery touch on the Governor for a few hundreds with which to round out the quarter symmetrically. These lopsided quarters, that begin like one of Coal Oil Johnny's nights, and wind up like one of John D. Rockefeller's days, bewilder a man's stomach and finally make it cross. The Governor's letter had pained me deeply, for, though he had coughed up, he had done it with a hacking, congested sound. And yet, since he had emigrated from Akron, with his little bundle of Consolidated Groceries pre- 6 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL ferred slung over his back, and had had his Sunday-school-superintendent whiskers trimmed down to the captain-of-industry length, he had kept half of Wall Street sleeping with its fortune under the pillow. His clean-up in Consolidated Groceries was so big that the men who chipped into his game out West call him "Con" Spur- lock to this day; but he had turned some new ones since which made that look like an allowance for the children. It did seem that the easier he got it, the harder he let go. He was a fond parent all right, but, apparently, it was money he was fond of. After I had cashed in, I started down town by myself for an evening of quiet introspection. "Look within," as Marcus Aurelius so finely expresses it in the sixth book of his Thoughts: "Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee;" so it was me for the contemplative stunts. I found Philosophy a queer study. It was easy enough to begin, but it was awfully hard to continue. For first you had to go broke, and then you had to learn how to feel sorry for the boys with the coin. I got frightfully twisted about it sometimes. I stood the show at the Athenaeum till a fine antique, with genuine Chippendale legs, came out and began to sing, "They Are Sitting up with JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 7 Sister, Oh! He Spurned a Loving Heart," winding up each verse with a rush of grief to the feet. First she 'd reach for him out in the wings, and then up over her head. If she could have landed on him just once with either hooflet, sister would have been avenged. It was one of those shows which you take two drinks after, and then a third, slower. That got me to the Touraine. Then, after profound thought, I remembered a lobster in the Dutch Room, but no bear; and when we were turned cut I had met Monty Applethorpe there, one of the Salem Applethorpes fine, old New England family that sold rum in the fifth genera tion and buys it in the ninth I remembered our going over to the Common and thanking the Shaw statue for his public services; and Monty's crying because the days when a man could lay down his life for the flag were gone; and standing there singing, "My Country, 'tis of Thee" Monty's specialty, when he got a few in him, was patriotism till a cop told us to scat or he 'd pinch us. And I remembered wringing the hand of John L. Sullivan in an all-night hotel and telling him that if our colleges laid more emphasis on training our youth in the manly art, Americans would be a hardier and more resourceful race; and somebody's yelling, "Trun 8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL out them Ha'voids"; and then dusting off my trousers as I got up off the sidewalk and hailed a seeing-Boston cab. I did n't just remember buying the stack of blues, but I still had a few of them left when the next rift in the clouds came and the pure light of reason shone through. And I remembered laughing heartily at seeing everyone jump up and begin to climb a rope-ladder to the roof; and I remembered that laugh's dying away in a sucking sound when I looked around and saw a big, brutal cop holding Monty by his left ear and just reaching for mine. I started in to explain that we were students of Sociology, out gathering material for our theses, but the cop interrupted with, "Cut it out it's students of diviltry ye are!" which was a fairly sagacious observation for a cop. Then I remembered Monty's saying in a quiet, dignified way, "Here's my card," and beginning to explain that he was one of the Salem but the cop cut that out, too, which was lucky for Monty, because by the time he had reached the station-house, he had had another think and had decided that he was one of the Jamaica Plain Joneses a sensible bit of self-effacement. I had my second guess on the spot, and slipped a twenty in the cop's hand, with "Here's my card, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 9 sergeant"; and he suddenly grew very polite and answered, " I see there 's been a mistake in your case, professor"; and he took me down to the basement door and said to the cop on guard, "One of them Ha'voids," and to me, "Hump yourself!" I humped myself, and that was where I got separated from Monty. The Salem Applethorpes pride themselves on being awfully simple in their tastes, in spite of their wealth, and I suppose Monty figured that it would be cheaper to pay a fine than to tip the sergeant. If you 're a Salem Applethorpe, you can be a tight wad and people will only say that you dislike vulgar ostentation, or you can blow it and they '11 call you a bon vivant and a connoisseur. But when you 're just two years out from Akron, and button up, people say that you smell with all that tainted money about your person; or if you loosen up to purify yourself with good works, they don't give the credit to you, but to your guilty conscience; or if you start in to reduce the surplus with good times, they call you a cheap spender. There were a few poor films in the roll along here, for the next thing I remembered was waking up in a car at Harvard Square, and that was where the bear came into the kinetoscope. A dago was leading her across the square, io JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL taking her home, I suppose, after showing her off. She was a boxing bear, one of the sort that stands up and has a go with her master for the amusement of the thoughtless, and she still had the mitts on her paws. It struck me as awfully pathetic that an animal which had been born to the glad, free life of the wild should be degraded that way, and have to work nights putting up her dukes for a pittance of spaghetti money. So I stopped the dago and reproved him sternly for keeping a bear up so late. He rolled out some rare old Roman curses that sounded as if they might have been used by the populace in the Colosseum. They were new ones to me, and I almost forgot the bear in encouraging the dago to dig deeper into the dead past. Then somehow, as the talk slackened, it came to me as a happy inspiration that while the city of Boston had the magnificent Arnold Arboretum, it was shy of bears with which to stock it. I would buy this denizen of the forest, and bring a little sunshine into its sad life by liberating it next day in the Arboretum, there to start a herd and pass its declining years in the old, wild way. It 's strange how a few passed over the larynx will mellow and expand our rude Anglo-Saxon speech, but I was thinking in just that kind of language. I forgot some more along here, but I must JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 1 1 have bought the bear, all right, for when I reached up and felt for my roll in my waistcoat pocket, I found that what the tiger had n't got, the bear had. As Epictetus quite sagely observes in the Enchiridion, "Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things," and that was me right then. I was not entirely lacking in filial feeling, for I re proached myself bitterly for having locked up the Governor's good money in so slow an asset as a boxing bear. Of course I might have realised if I could have stayed by the bear market. But I was like the bank cashier who, in answer to a hurry-call from his wife to get rich quick, loaded up with Steel Common at fifty, only to find the toboggan greased and the bank examiner at the door. It was up to me to do something quick. Already little brown eyes, having licked up the last of the tar-soap lather, was emitting low, horrid growls. This I took to be the signal for feeding the carnivora. I could n't wash, and I could n't shave, but I hustled into my clothes, figuring that if I could find food enough, I could keep her quiet until twelve or one that night, when I could snake her out and lose her up the nearest dark alley. But I did n't know what bears would eat. iz JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Strange how little help a college education is in the practical crises of life. I hunted through Thompson Seton's Biography of a Grizzly, which happened to be on the table, and found that his bear liked berries, but they were not for my little pet in the state of the privy purse, for strawberries were coming from lower Florida and then some by water, and my darling was good for a crate before she moved up to the breakfast-food course. Suddenly I remembered something I 'd heard once, when I was out on Uncle Bill's ranch in Colorado, about bears just lapping up sweet things. So I grabbed an empty suit-case, hiked over to the square, and bought five pounds of candy. On the way home I stopped at a livery-stable and stuffed the suit-case with hay. I took a chance on that, because it 's filling, and most big animals like to tuck it away and make spit-balls of it when there 's nothing else to do. I did n't get back a moment too soon. The bear was growling so fiercely that I could hear her out in the hall. At any moment someone who would want explanations might happen along. Of course, there 's nothing criminal about keeping a bear in your bathroom, but it 's a bit unusual, and I suppose I 'm unduly sensitive about appear ing odd. Once inside I took a handful of choco- JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 13 lates, and, opening the bathroom door a crack, began to call softly, " Bearie, bearie, nice little bearie!" That was where the Governor almost lost his only son; but I was quick again and Battling Nelson only got a mouthful of doorknob. Then, for adversity was making me a perfect Swiss Family Robinson, I stood on a chair and threw the hay over the transom. She sniffed and sat down on it. I felt like the Duke's son when he has two throws for the estates and has just shaken deuces. I tried a handful of chocolate creams; she shied off, came back to smell and stayed to suck them up. In a minute I was Madame Zembla, before whose glance the proud monarchs of the jungle quail and tremble. Still Sappho, as I had christened the sharer of my modest apartments, was plainly thirsty, but she was between me and the water supply. That might have discouraged a naturalist or a prohibitionist. Not me. I looked in the wood- box, found that there were a few left, and lowered a bottle over the transom on a string. Sappho was not only an educated, but a dissipated bear. She was on in a minute. I had introduced the suds to her with a doubting heart, and it had n't a show in the same room with her. Two gurgles and a grunt, and she was up to licking the foam i 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL from her whiskers, and looking up in a way that said plainer than words: "You are so good to me." I had just passed down the third bottle to her and was wondering how many it took to make a bear good-natured, when I woke up to a rapping on my door, and heard a girl's voice saying: "Knock louder, mamma; he must be in." Old Spinoza knew his business when he laid down Proposition LXIII. in Part IV. of his Ethics: "He who is led by fear to do good that he may escape evil, is not guided by reason"; but I did n't think of it until a week after Edith and her mother had gone home. Instead, I remembered that they were there in response to an invitation which I had given them to take tea in my rooms that afternoon; and before I could think of anything else to do I had let them in. I looked next morning and smelt last night, I 'm afraid; and I started right in to talk very fast and loud, because Sappho in the bathroom was breathing so hard that I was afraid they would hear her. But they did n't appear to notice anything especially out of the way, and I had the water almost boiling, and we were talking of the Puvis de Chavannes pictures, and the influence of President Eliot on the student body, and all those foolish subjects which come up if JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 15 the girl's mother is along, when Sappho let out a frightful snort, and followed that up with a series of little gurgly, grumbly growls. Edith jumped, her mother started, and I coughed in one of those feeble attempts to change the noise. It was an awful moment and my heart skipped two beats, but living in that atmosphere of danger must have quickened my faculties, for I explained in an embarrassed way which made them sorry they 'd noticed the racket: " Plumbing's all out of order; beastly shame the way they 're letting the buildings run down.'* They blushed, and it went. Sappho simmered off, and it looked as if I were going to get away with it, after all, when bang! and an empty beer bottle came through the transom and me talking about the Pop. Concerts and the place of music in our efforts to elevate the masses. It was very embarrassing for me as hostess. I did n't cough this time; I laughed a gibbering, idiot laugh, while Mamma got up, as stately as the Gilt Dome and as stiff as the Sacred Codfish. "E-dith!" "Yes, mamma." "We must be going." Then to me: "You would better attend to your plumbing, young man. It seems to be growing playful." And so they faded out of my life forever. 16 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Oh! What a School for Scandalousness! Com promised by a bear locked up in the bathroom! I have n't done any forgetting about what happened that night, but let me hurry over it: how Monty pounded on the door and finally gave it up with, "Off hitting it up again"; how I fed Sappho chocolate creams, and debated whether it would jolly her along if I opened more beer, or give her a head that would make her crosser; how at one o'clock I peeked through the bathroom door and again just escaped with my life; how Sappho, in her disappointment, tried to climb over the transom to get at me; and how, finally, I settled down in an armchair and dozed, my sleep broken by horrid nightmares, in which Sappho was chasing Edith through the water- pipes into President Eliot's office, where she was going to complain that it was n't healthy for me to sleep in a room with all that sewer gas. I did n't wake up until nine o'clock, and then it was with the determination to do what I should have done when I first discovered Sappho to get her out into the hall and leave her in any room that I found empty. I heated the poker over the spirit lamp, filled my pockets with chocolates, opened the bath room door, and stood like the hero of a three- sheet circus poster, waiting for the first wild JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 17 spring. Nothing sprang. Instead, Sappho walked out like a lap-dog, smelt of me apprecia tively, and followed me into the hall. The doors that we passed were all locked, so I dumped the chocolates on the floor in the entry, and, as soon as Sappho got busy with -them, put for my first lecture, where I found a secluded nook in the back of the classroom. The professor was at the blackboard with his back to the class, doing stunts with the bino mial theorem, and I was sitting there wondering why he took such a passionate interest in it, when there was a scuffle and a titter on the other side of the room, and I saw Sappho sniffing along up the aisle. One of the most remarkable exhibi tions of discipline that I have ever seen followed, for someone raised a warning hand, and all the time that Sappho was shuffling toward the pro fessor not a man batted an eyelid or did a thing to distract her attention. Step by step the bear progressed. Step by step the professor demonstrated. Would the binomial theorem hold out ? Would the professor turn around ? It was a ten to one shot, but luck was in the saddle. It did; he didn't until Sappho got right up behind him. Then he swung around suddenly, saw her, and threw up his hands to ward her off. i8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL What did he do that for if he did n't want to mix it up ? Could n't he see that she was a trained bear ? What did he think she wore the mitts for ? And what did he expect when he put up his dukes that way ? I tried to tell him all this afterward, but he would n't listen. Just flew into a childish, unreasonable rage. Of course, Sappho thought that he wanted to spar her a few rounds, and it was anything to oblige with her that morning. She was certainly a fine and dandy scrapper. She came right back at him with an upper cut which landed, and then fetched him a left hook under the jaw that made him take the count. "Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish," as Epictetus puts it in the Enchiridion; "but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." Far be it from me knocking so wise a guy as Epictetus, but he certainly called it wrong that time. At least, I 've got evidence against him. Why did n't I run home then and lock myself in my room ? Why, oh why, did I butt in ? I was one of the first up to the platform, one of the first to assist the professor to his feet. And, as I murmured sympathetic words in his ear, Sappho saw me and made for me. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 19 If she had biffed me one it would have been all right, but she simply fell on my neck and slobbered all over me with the most extravagant demonstrations of affection. It was like hav ing one of those mushy girls dead gone on you and trying to let you see that it 's all right, while you wonder how you can put her next to your loathing for her without hurting her feelings. I unclasped Sappho's clinging arms roughly, but she came back; I kicked her shins, and she licked my face; I explained that perhaps she was a bear that I had been kind to when she was a cub; that all bears liked me; that I possessed a strange fascination for animals, and especially intelligent ones. I protested my innocence; I swore that I had never seen this bear before; that I had never in all my life seen any bears except stuffed ones. But the professor simply looked at me with the cold eye of certainty. Finally, I on my dignity and Sappho on her hind legs, we withdrew, the whole class following and cheering. They attended in a body to the Zoo, where I carried out my original intention, and, in a neat little speech, presented Sappho to the City of Boston. These are the real facts, for I never lie except to help a friend or to entertain a lady, but when I got back to New York and laid them before 20 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL the Governor, he, too, listened coldly. Then he talked warmly. I was a good deal in earnest myself, for while I am no Cassandra, and never yell fire until someone actually picks up the kero sene can and starts for Troy, I had an awful premonition that I was standing on the threshold of the grocery business. I carried myself quite proudly until I discovered that the Governor really intended to order me into chains and away to the galleys. Then, of course, I tried to make him see the improbability and absurdity of the whole situation. I assured him that the idea of my ever becoming a captain of industry was preposterous; that I was sure I could n't be a captain of limited industry even, but he would n't listen. He was so full of bear that there was no room in him for suggestion, and the only concession which I could get was a change of sentence from the Akron to the Chicago branch. That, a hundred for railway fare, and some good advice at least he said it was good, though it rang a little hollow to me was all I took away in exchange for half an hour of brilliant repartee and cogent reasoning. I certainly did get conned at Harvard. While I was there I put in a year of the hardest kind of work on logic, under the impression that I could go up against the Governor with it and get away JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 21 with the prize money right along. Yet the first time I made practical use of it and handed out a syllogism which was a corker, containing major and minor promises to be good that admitted of only one conclusion a thousand the Gover nor went dead against all the rules which my professor told me must be observed by every reasonable person, and arrived at a feeble and fallacious hundred as the answer. That 's what comes of arguing with anyone who has n't a trained mind. Even when you 've got the best of him, he won't admit it. Even if he 's forced to admit it, he's so mad with you for giving him the worst of it that he won't cough up the fruits of victory. So what 's the use ? I was too disgusted to care what happened to me after I saw how cheap the Governor held me, and I took the first train for Chicago. CHAPTER II IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL DESCRIBES HIS LIFE IN THE GALLEYS IF I owned a railroad, I 'd have all the trains run ten miles an hour going toward Chicago, and a hundred going away from it. For the hardships which I suffered there during the next two months were simply incredible. The Gover nor would say, no doubt, that my troubles were of my own making, but I 'm sure that no one who knew me would believe that I would make trouble for myself. I did n't have to. That fellow Rawden, who was the head of the Chicago branch, was ninety-nine per cent, of the Trouble Trust, with malice toward all, with charity for none. I got to Chicago in the afternoon, and settled myself in a comfortable room in the Annex; for I not only held with Carnegie that to die rich was to die disgraced, but I went him one better and maintained that to live poor was to live dis graced. Next morning I rose at eight sharp, as I had heard that Chicago was an early town, and I was determined that, so long as I was in 22 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 23 Porkopolis, I should do as the porkers did. By nine I was on my way to report to Rawden. I don't suppose that a Chicago cab ever carried a load of better intentions, for now that I was in for it, I was determined to follow the illustrious example of Tom Lipton, and other heroes of the grocery business, to whom the Governor had pointed with pride in our final interview. I would do something or somebody, or die. It 's lucky I had a third guess which I overlooked at the moment, or I should be dead. Aside from some loose ideas on the money question, a sort of B. C. Bryanism, old Epictetus generally dopes it out right. I had occasionally put my wad on him and been thrown, but usually he was my one best bet. As we passed a good- looking hotel, I remembered that somewhere in the Enchiridion he says: "When you are going to meet any person, and particularly one of those who are considered to be in a superior condition, place before yourself what Socrates or Zeno would have done in such circumstances, and you will have no difficulty in making a proper use of the occasion." I could n't quite remember what Zeno's specialty was, but I placed Socrates as the boy who made hemlock famous as an appetiser among the ancients. Evidently it was up to me to take a drink, if I would make a good first 24 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL impression, so I stopped the cab and sopped up a dry Martini, that being as close as one can get to the classics in Chicago. I was n't particularly struck with the looks of the branch when I got there. The official smell of Chicago was slightly tempered in the neighbourhood by an odour of roasting coffee, giving an effect like that obtained by a gentleman who bathes infrequently, and as an offset, carries a perfumed handkerchief. But there was no atmosphere of calm or repose about the place. It was a big factory, backed up against the river, with warehouses and offices in front. Every one on the shipping platforms outside seemed frightfully busy. Inside, it looked better, though depressingly busy again. There was a large office on the ground floor, in which at least a hundred clerks were working away as if to over take their small, but agile salaries. Opening from it were a dozen little rooms. Through the glass doors of these I caught glimpses of some chesty old boys, smoking two-bit cigars and dictating to fair girl stenographers. That looked homey and all right. I chose a blonde. There was no one sitting at the desk near the door, so I walked by it and into an office marked, "Mr. Rawden, Private." The man who was in there gave me a look out of the corner of his eye, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 25 but kept on writing. It struck me that he was unnaturally busy, busier than any man can be who is really busy, so I sat down, pulled out a paper and began to read. That seemed to annoy him, for he looked up and snapped out: "How d' you get in here?'* I did n't like his face; I did n't like his manner; and I did n't like his tone; so I answered pleas antly: "Walked in, sir." "Well, walk out then, and be quick about it." "Certainly," I answered. "If you '11 send word to the Annex whenever you wish to see me I '11 be at your disposal," and I started to leave. "Stop!" he yelled after me. "What's your name ?" I turned and saw in his eye that he knew it, that he had known it all along, but I remembered that Socrates was a patient cuss, and that he advocated sweetness and light, with an eye skinned for careless base-running, as a better way of putting out an opponent than swatting him over the head with a baseball bat. So I gave Rawden a win ning smile and my card. "What time is this to be reporting for work?" he grumbled, holding the card as if it were an insult. I saw now that my first impression was correct 26 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL and that I was n't going to like this man, but I answered, still patient: "Nine fifteen, sir, and an hour when no one but the lark and the milkman are doing business back in God's country." That was pretty fresh, and my only excuse for doing it was that I could n't think of anything fresher. "Don't get gay," he shot back, sticking out his under lip at me, a trick that heightened the naturally unpleasant expression of his face. "We don't have any favourites or stand for any Harvard nonsense in this shop, and the sooner you under stand it the better we '11 get along together. Your hours are from eight to six, and see that you keep them. I '11 set you to work as soon as I get through here," and he started in to look busy again. He had n't asked me to sit down, but I sat down anyway, and was gratified to note that his scowl deepened. Then, as he had a stump of a cigar between his lips, I lit a cigarette. It was simply great to see him come up for all the world as if I 'd lit a bomb and was watching the fuse sizzle. "Stop that! Stop that! "he fairly yelled. "We don't allow the clerks to smoke in business hours. We don't allow cigaroot smoking at all." If I had followed the promptings of my better JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 27 nature I should have pasted him then and there, but I restrained myself, for I saw that the Socratic method was the one with which to get the most pleasure with him. Fighting the devil with fire is n't effective, because that 's his element. When one really wants to get gratifying results, one should use a little water, and watch him hiss and sputter under it. So I replied in a soothing tone: "Certainly, certainly," and dropped my ciga rette before continuing: "But doesn't it strike you as rather high-handed to say what the men shall smoke at home? Oh! I know," I hurried on, waving my hand genially, "that many laymen hold that cigarettes are more injurious than cigars, but on the other hand, we have the opinion of some of our highest authorities, including the London Lancet " "Damn the London Lancet," he interrupted, shoving his face up against mine. "I tell you that we don't allow " Here he started back as if I 'd stung him, and, sniffing suspiciously, wound up: "I smell liquor on your breath. You Ve been drinking. I might have known it." I had n't imagined that just one would give me a megaphone breath, and I saw that I should have to be careful with the Chicago benzene whenever I wished to remain incog. Of course I wanted to conform to the customs of the business 28 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL world, but it struck me that Rawden was getting sociable altogether too fast. The next thing I knew he 'd be pulling a stomach pump on me to see what I 'd had for breakfast. So I answered, a little sharply. "Smell again, sir, if it gives you pleasure. And let me add, to save time, that I've been eating too." He fairly gritted his teeth. Then: "You will not drink while you are employed by this house understand ?" I did n't answer, because I did n't care to lie. "And we '11 cut this short," he went on, "and get down to work." Then, with a half sneer, "Any preference about what you 'd like to do?" "Well, I should n't have ventured to suggest it, but as long as you 're so kind, I have a pre ference." " My place, perhaps ?" "No; I 'm afraid I have n't the qualities for that, but I 'd like to have the job which goes with that blonde," and I pointed to a pippin who was pounding the keys just outside his door. I took her for the head of the sugar department. Of course, the only answer that a gentleman could make to this was a look of scorn. Then, with the manner of one opening the windows to let out a bad smell, Rawden called a subordinate and turned me over to him, with: "This is JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 29 Mr. Spurlock. He goes on the billing desk at twenty dollars a week. Break him in." Nit blond stenographer. Then to me: "I hope that I shall hear better reports of you than this interview leads me to expect." The Governor must have written rather slightingly of my abilities to make Rawden so cocky and offensive, for he was the sort of a cur to cringe for a kick, and then to thank me for it, if he had n't been tipped off that I was in disgrace and could n't help or hurt him. Why do we have penitentiaries when we could get even with criminals by making them do office work ? In the two weeks that I was on the billing desk I atoned for all the sins of my present life, and, admitting the Pythagorean theory, squared the account back to the time when I was an innocent trilobite. They had a boy at the door to keep cases on us, and my card was the last one out of the box every crack. It was such a regular thing that if I had n't been on the inside myself, I 'd have sworn the game was crooked. Whenever I tried to get down extra early I caused a scandal in the office. Once I started in to beat the game by going to bed at eight o'clock. About three I was wide awake, and by six I had counted all the sheep in the world and had begun on goats. But I proved the theory sound, because 3 o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL the next thing I knew it was noon and the hotel management was boosting a boy over the transom to see if I had been asphyxiated. Then I tried sitting up all night, and I made the office at seven A. M., but while I was waiting for the sluggards to come down to their tasks, I got so drowsy that I fell asleep on the desk. I had had barely forty winks when that cussed Rawden happened by and started in to shake me awake. Now a child should have known better than that, because, as I explained to him afterward, anyone who is at all familiar with the results of recent psychical research knows that the subconscious ego intensely resents being forced to surrender its dominion over the brain to the conscious ego. And after one's conscious ego has spent a quick and hasty night endeavouring to cover the principal points of interest in a large city, it is n't always safe to turn in a hurry call on the brain cells to start billing prunes. I really thought that I was back in college, with Monty pounding on the door and yelling, "Get up, you pup!" and that I 'd just thrown a book at him. But that was all a dream. The real thing was Rawden shaking one fist at me, and wiping the ink off" his face with the other lucky for him that I had swatted him in the chest in stead of in the head with the inkwell while JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 31 he yelled to me to go home and sleep off my debauch. Would n't that sting you sharper than a serpent's tooth, if you were trying to win out and please your Governor ? After that, I lived in an endless chain of rough house for a fortnight. The head of my depart ment took the tip from Rawden's manner and gave it to me every time anything went wrong on the desk. I confess that he usually hit it right, for as a bill clerk I was probably the rottenest that ever sat on a high stool. Then Rawden took a crack at me every morning, and sent father a daily chronicle of my doings which must have read like a page from the Police Gazette. Of course, it all worked back to me in impulsive letters from home. In the meanwhile I had been having trouble with my finances. Money is the root of all evil perhaps; but it 's a cinch that the lack of it is the root of all worry. I had been a star member of the Don't Worry Club all my life. The initia tion fee is a roll with a rubber band around it. Then you belong. At the end of my first week in Chicago I had the rubber band, but the roll was outside of it, so I lost my membership. I sent my hotel bill and one or two other matters to father, and while he returned a check for them he told me that he would pay no more bills; that 32 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL he expected me to hunt a boarding-house and live on my salary, and there was no over-the-left postscript or tear marks on the letter, either. Now I had been proceeding on the theory that for a fellow who submitted to such indignities all day, nothing was too good at night. It had never occurred to me that father expected me to live on my pitiful salary; in fact I had not even mentioned the matter of remuneration to him in our final talk, taking the higher view that while I was learning to be a captain, he would not permit worry over money matters to distract my attention from business. Of course, I knew a lot of people did live on twenty a week, but I did n't propose to be one of them at least one of them and a billing clerk, too. That was rubbing it in altogether too deep. However, I saw from the tone of the Governor's letter that he was so wrapped up in the idea of my living on my humble earnings that I must humour him for a while. I must prove that even if I were a dub at sordid detail, I was all to the good where large amounts were concerned. I must show him that there was the making of a sky-high, over-the-hurdles, balk-at-nothing financier in me. How to raise money ? How to get the gilt ? How did people raise money ? How did Pierpont raise the wind ? How did Cassie get away with JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 33 the coin? How did the Governor Why sure! from confiding friends at the bank. I had brought quite a bundle of letters with me to Chicago, and by the merest chance I had already presented one to father's banker and had dined there. Of course, I was the young prince to him, Mr. Main Squeeze, Junior, heir- apparent to the whole chicory works, but that side of it did n't occur to me then. It might have if I 'd stopped to think, but I was in a hurry. In fact, I promised Cabbie a dollar tip, and he burned up the asphalt to the bank. The president was very gentlemanly about it took a ninety-day note for two thousand without asking a single prying question, and called me his "dear young friend, whom he hoped to see more of." It was a safe hope, and I told him so. That little interview helped to restore my faith in humanity. Apparently, all business men were n't lacking in the finer feelings. When I reached the office about eleven, with the stiffening in my backbone that comes from a silent treatment by two thousand in the pistol- pocket, and with a stern determination to buck up now and show them that I was a boy business wonder, I was told to report to Rawden. Of course, we had a most unpleasant scene. He reproached me bitterly for being late; told 34 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL me that in the fortnight since I had gone to work the finest office force in Chicago had become demoralised; that half the men were late every morning. I confessed cheerfully that I was a sound and sincere sleeper, if that was what he meant. He ignored my manly statement, and went on to say that within a week a dozen men had struck him for raises in salary, due to a propa ganda of discontent which I had been spreading. I promptly went on record as being of the opinion that ten thousand a year was little enough for a billing clerk. And finally how my heart leaped, for I hoped that he was leading up to firing me! in direct disobedience of HIS orders, I had continued to smoke what I pleased, to drink when I pleased, and yesterday I had been seen giving a box of candy to HIS stenographer. This must stop. My heart sank, for it looked as if I was n't to be fired after all, and I had vowed to stick by the grocery till I set fire to it in my sleep, or they threw me out. He wound up by saying that I would have one more chance, and that if I did n't make good this time the stuff was all off. For the present, he was going to put me out on the street to collect small city accounts. He emphasised "small," to let me see that he was afraid I might embezzle big ones, if they were entrusted to me. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 35 I felt like the prisoner of Chillon, those first few days after he got out of that French Sing Sing. And I went around blinking like an old rounder, trying to get the desk electrics out of my eyes. Then I hired a dandy little runabout by the week, though I did n't obtrude it in the neighbourhood of the office, and chased around from one corner grocery to another, making one boy unpin a ten-spot from the lining of his vest, and another dig up a dollar sixty- three from the stocking. It looked as if being a captain was n't so rotten, after all. But when I 'd had a few days of this, I began to find it pretty tiresome. All my stores seemed to be in the slums, and then some of the grocers were absurdly petty and trifling about their bills said they would have the money next day, or that there was an overcharge, or that the goods were n't right anything to give me trouble. Besides, I found that there were a lot of amusing things to do in Chicago and lots of bully places to go, after one had located one's old college friends and had been introduced to their sisters. Little by little I stopped bothering with tne grocers who kicked up a fuss the amounts were small, anyway and paid the bills out of my own pocket. The cashier told me that I was the best collector the house had ever had, and added 36 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL that if I could keep this gait up, I 'd be given larger accounts for collection. Of course I discouraged that idea, for I knew my finances would n't stand any such strain. Still, I began to get stuck on myself, and every one except Rawden would have been happy and satisfied if a bull- headed Dutch grocer had n't come into the office one morning and insisted on discussing a bill which I had already paid for him. I tried to shut him up by winking at him, but I only succeeded in making him so indignant that he blurted out: "What for dot young monkey winks unt laughs by me, hey ? I tink I puy mein groceries from a house dot haf young mans mit respegdt for deir gustomers." Rawden, the human hurry-wagon, smelled rough-house of some sort starting, and saw that I was mixed up in it. So he came running. I made a quick, but bum, finish as a star collector right there, and was suspended from all duty with the house, pending the receipt of wired instructions from the Governor. They came with a rush: "Put him to work stencilling boxes in the factory." I was certainly discouraged. There I was, the only man with the house who was n't afraid of losing his job, and the only one who did n't seem able to lose it. Still, there was a hopeful * 03 03 % S c i- C 1) u ~ O ) 03 * V I-C * JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 37 side to the situation. The only thing they could do to me next time would be to fire me. The Governor had made his mistake in not starting me in as manager. Then he 'd have had places enough left on the way down to have kept me with the house for a year or two at least. CHAPTER III IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL GIVES THE GOVERNOR THE DIRECT COMMAND I MOVED across the runway into the factory, and joined the pre-Raphaelite school of stencillers. On the whole, I liked it better than the office. The men were n't a bad sort, and they were n't afraid to spit without asking per mission, like the clerks. When they were really convinced that I was n't practising art for art's sake, or was n't up to any brotherhood-of-man foolishness, or luck and pluck, start-in-at-the- bottom stunts, but that I was up against it lik? the rest of them, and working because I had to, they let me buy tubs for them at the Dutchman's, and began to buy back for me, which was final proof that I had won their confidence. I was docked most of my wages every week for being late, but I was n't worrying about that, so long as my kind old friend who owned the bank did n't bust. He was so easy with the depositors' money that I used to fret a good deal for fear that he might be speculating on the side. Even ings, when I was n't too dogged tired, there was 38 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 39 always a dinner or a dance at the house of some college friend, or friend of his, to go to, though as soon as I reached my room in the Annex I had to take a couple of hot baths and use a quart of benzene to get the lampblack off my hands. Even then, they looked as if they belonged to a plumber's helper. And when I started in to waltz, it smelt as if a touring car were being run across the floor. Sometimes a sweet young thing would ask how I liked Chicago and what I was doing, and I 'd answer, "Stencilling boxes." Of course, she 'd come back with, "How perfectly lovely of you!" or, "How plucky!" And when I'd answer, "Not at all," she would protest, "How modest of you!" and I 'd let it go at that, because I did n't want to injure my credit. I got into the papers, too, under the heading, "Sterling Stuff in This Boy. Young Spurlock Dons Over alls to Learn Business from Ground Up." Other times, instead of going back to tne Annex, I 'd nose around with some of the men from the factory. It was a twister to see how they managed to make ends meet on their wages, though most of them were married and raising an incredible number of children. When I 'd see them playing in the streets and alleys, starved and stunted, I 'd wonder whether race suicide was n't better than child murder. 4 o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Well, things ran on this way for almost a month, and I was beginning to lose all hope of ever being fired, when one noon a new man backed me into a corner and started in to tell me that I was a slave, working for a dog's wages, while old Spur- lock back East was rolling so high that he never touched the ground except to pick up a fresh quart. I allowed it was a shame, owned right up to being a slave, and wanted to know what I ought to do about it. Then he told me that he was unionising the works, and that practically all the men had come in. Would I join the union ? Would I join ? I Ve always been ready to join anybody for anything, from a drink up, and the bigger the foolishness, the harder I join. I came back at the organiser like a grass widow getting a sudden proposal from a seventy-year old mil lionaire Senator. It was the first glint of sunshine that had come into my hard life for two months. The organiser wanted to back down when he heard that I was young Spurlock thought that I must be "a hireling and a spy" but the men would n't stand for my being left out, and I was among those present when the meeting of the new union was called in Plasterers' Hall. It was simply great to hear them soak it to the Governor. First, I sat there chuckling, but by and by I began to forget the josh end of it that JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 41 I had joined for, and to remember my own griev ances against the house. When I have three hooters in me and begin to pity myself, I either have to have three more and forget it, or blow off the accumulated language. Before I knew it I was on my feet and speaking. At first I took the hurdles timidly, but little by little, as I got the smell of the kerosene in my nose and felt the tan bark under my feet, I began to go through the hoops with double somersaults. I remembered things I 'd heard Bryan called in campaign speeches, fragments of an old college debate on, Are Unions a Menace to Business ? and Latin lines from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I let fly with them all at Con. Groceries, and brought down the house. I Ve heard some bang- up operas in my time, but I Ve never heard any thing that rang so melodiously in my ears as the sound of my own voice that night. If my gas-works had only blown up, or if a dog-fight had started in the back of the hall, anything to head me off, it would have been all right even then; but my good angel was having her Thursday out, and there was no one to whisper, "Trouble, trouble, dark man coming over the water." I was so doped with my siren song that I steered straight for the rocks, and wound up by asking my fellow workmen whether 42 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL they were Chinese coolies or free-born American citizens, and whether they could face their inno cent wives and children when they went home that night, unless they had asserted their man hood in a demand for shorter hours and a living wage. When I finished a thousand lunatics passed me around the hall on their shoulders and cheered me as if I were the young prince and giving away money. It was simply great till I came out from under the influence. For ten minutes I was so busy grasping the horny hands of my admirers that I had no chance to pay any attention to what was happening on the platform. Then someone escorted me back there, and I discovered that my comrades had honoured me with their suffrages to the extent O of making me chairman of a grievance committee of three, with instructions to wait on Rawden first thing in the morning and to confer with him on recognition of the union, shorter hours and higher wages. Again they cheered me to the echo, the hollow, empty echo, and oh how cruel, how brutal their silly yelling sounded! Never again can I be conned by "One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name!" That night I made up my mind that I 'd take any glory JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 43 that was coming to me thereafter in little easy installments. Even while they were cheering me, I realised that it was no time for temporising, started up to voice a firm refusal to act on the committee, and sat down thanking my friends for the confidence which they had reposed in me! I tried sheep, goats, and fifty-seven varieties of soothing stunts when I got back to my room in the Annex, but all night I tossed from one side of the bed to the other, and with every toss I had a new thought which scared away a week's sleep. I knew that the Governor remembered Teddy Roosevelt and labour unions in the same prayer but it was one that he said backward. My trained bear and my labour-saving inventions were going to look like mere peccadilloes, youthful indiscretions, beside this latest monument to my asininity. But I had to see it through. I 'd pulled the trigger; and I could n't stand aside and let the men take the kick. When I got down in the morning, the whole force was massed outside the factory, and I was n't received with cheers either. Instead; there were yells of "Traitor!" "Hang him!" and I found myself surrounded by a lot of men who were competing for a chance to shove under my nose those honest, horny palms which I had grasped so joyously the night before. They 44 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL must have seen, though, that I was genuinely bewildered, for I managed, finally, to make them listen long enough to learn that, when they had reported for work, they had found that they were locked out. Rawden had refused to parley with them, even. "And you 're the skunk that put it up on us ! " shouted one objectionable individual in the crowd, while some fellow-enthusiasts chimed in, "Yes, he done it! Soak it to him good!" I saw that this was no time for well-chosen words or flowers of speech, so I got right down to facts. "Boys," I said, "the man in this crowd who says that I have n't been on the level is a damned liar, and I '11 fight him to a finish right now if the rest of you '11 stand by and see fair play. Rawden must have had a spy in that meeting last night, but it was n't me. I stand to lose more than all the rest of you put together, but I 'm going to see the thing through, and if you' 11 stick by me we '11 win. But, win or lose, I 'm with you for keeps. Come on, and we '11 make Rawden show where he stands." I have my faults, but I 'm not a quitter when there 's no way to quit. The men must have felt that I meant what I said, because there was no more talk of soaking me, and when I started toward the office, they all followed along. Rawden, backed up by half a dozen cops, received us at the front door. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 45 "Mr. Rawden," I began, drawing myself up impressively, and striking the chest notes of the lower octave, "I am here this morning on behalf of my fellow-workmen " "Never mind all that, Jack," Rawden cut in, as pleasant and offensively familiar as you please. "You 're to take the first train for New York and report to your father. The rest of you are all discharged." Of course, the yellow dog put it that way so as to queer me with the men. And how they came up! Gad, but it was a near thing for me! There was a moment's dead silence as Rawden ducked back, then a roar, and the crowd sprang for me, like a cageful of hyenas for the last hunk of meat. By using clubs, the cops managed to draw me inside and bolt the door, but not before I 'd caught it proper. And all that morning the men hung around outside, ravening for my blood, while Rawden inside grinned and sneered at me. It took a covered patrol-wagon and a dozen cops to ship me off on the Limited to New York. Something of all this got into the papers, of course, but they took the view that I 'd helped father do up the union in a rather clever way. I had plenty of time to think on the train. I 'd often had enough for that purpose before, but I 'd generally used it in some more amusing 46 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL way. This time, though, I really turned the whole thing over carefully, and it seemed to me that, even if the men had rounded on me, I had no right to go back on them until I 'd exhausted every means in my power to put them where they had been before I had mixed in their affairs. It was evening when I got back to God's country, but after a hasty evening along Broad way, I concluded that He must be a non-resident. The next afternoon I called at the Governor's office in Wall Street. The clerks there looked at me in a curious, scared fashion, as if I 'd com mitted some frightful crime for which I was about to pay the death penalty, and the Governor's secretary carried out the illusion by speaking in hushed, awed tones, as if he were administering the last sad rites. This jarred my confidence a little, but I got quick action on my card and was in the private office before I could decide to change my mind and call again later. I 'd thought, up to the moment I saw the Gover nor, that I was scared half to death; but then I discovered in a flash that I was n't it was only the pleasant quiver of anticipation which the prospect of a row always brings. "Well, sir?" he began, boring through me with those sharp gray eyes of his. "Yes, sir," I answered. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 47 "What's all this I hear about you from the West ?" He was beginning to work himself into a passion. "I don't believe that I can add anything to your information, sir." "But I can add something to yours. I can tell you that you Ve disgraced me and disgraced yourself again. I can tell you for the last time that, unless you 're through with all this damned nonsense, I 'm through with you." I kept my temper, and met his eye squarely. "Father," I answered, "you 're quite right. I have n't done the straight thing by you and I 'm ashamed of myself. Help me out this once and I '11 follow your orders, no matter what they are." That mollified him a little. Then it came: "You cut loose from all that damned union business before you left ?" "No, sir, I " "No, sir; no, sir! What the devil do you mean by coming here then ? You 're a striker, understand, and I '11 not talk to you, or treat with you, or own you as my son, until you break with that whole gang of ruffians." "I can't do that, father," I answered. "It would n't be a square deal. It was my foolishness that got the men into this mess, and I 've passed 48 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL my word that I '11 get them out of it. Come now, Governor," and I descended to wheedling, "give me just this little strike, and I '11 never ask another favour from you. What 's one little strike to you ? You can have a dozen others if you want them." But it did n't go. It was like pouring kerosene on the kitchen fire. "Quick now, you fool; I give you a last chance; decide between me and your union." "Oh, come, father," I protested; "that's too ridiculous. There 's no question of any union involved with me, but I 've got to stay out on the strike until you take the rest back." I was getting a little warm myself. The Governor pushed a bell and the secretary appeared, looking as if some one had kicked him into the room, and as if he expected some one to kick him out of it. "Give Mr. Spurlock a check for ten thousand dollars and take his receipt for his Aunt Julia Spurlock's legacy." Then to me: "That winds up our business, sir. Mr. Horton will show you out," and before I knew it I had my check and was walking along Wall Street. It was pretty bad, but not so bad as it would have been without the check. I 'd about given up hope of ever seeing that legacy, because Aunt JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 49 Julia had left it in trust, the interest to be paid to me yearly, the principal to be given to me at the Governor's discretion; and he was nothing if not discreet about giving up money. I was walking along Broadway, when I heard some one behind me yell, "Hello, sporty boy Spur!" and, turning, I found myself face to face with Jim Carson, who had left Harvard the year before to go into the advertising business with his father. Jirn was loud and joyous, and all for buying at once. As the same thought had already occurred to me, we were soon comfortably seated and telling each other how good we were, and how fast we 'd come up in the business world since we 'd left college. But truth is mighty and will prevail. By the time it was up to me to buy back, Jirn had slipped down from a partnership in his father's business to his proper place as an advertising copy writer. And when he bought back, I dismounted from my high horse, and owned up to being the hero of a Wall Street melo drama. Jim whistled, but when I mentioned the ten thousand, he allowed that there were alleviating circumstances. "And what now, Sporty Boy ?" he asked when he had digested this final fact. "I 've got to go back to Chicago," I answered. "With real money in your clothes ? Nonsense!" 5 o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "But you don't understand, Jim. Aunt Julia's coin has got to go into the strike fund, at least all except two thousand." For now that I could n't depend on the Governor to do the proper thing, I 'd have to square that little note which my kind old friend had taken. "Give you poor Aunt Julia's savings to the union! On the dead, Spur, that 's carrying it too far. No wonder the old man got cross with you, if that 's a sample of your nonsense." "I can't help it Jim; I Ve got to play the game, even if my cards are bum." "But they don't want you in it, you chump. Why, from what you 've just told me yourself, they 'd probably pound you to a pulp while you were trying to hand over the money. Snuff up and forget it." I had to labour with Jim for half an hour before he would believe that I really meant it. But finally I saw that he was beginning to abandon his sordid attitude toward Aunt Julia's pin-money, for the gloom lifted from his brow and his eyes snapped. "Spur," he began impressively when I was all through, "do you want to win that strike?" "Sure I do; what have I been talking about?" "Then you must stay in New York." " But the strike's in Chicago, idiot," I answered, beginning to get a little hot at his stupidity. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 51 "Yes; but who is the main squeeze, the whole chicory works, the boy who has the last say in Con. Groceries ? Is it, or is it not, your dad ? Answer me that." "Of course it's dad." "Then there 's no use bothering with that Chicago bunch of also-rans. We must work on your Governor. Spur," he wound up trium phantly, "we must give him a psychological impulse." "Psychological hell!" I answered, but interested all the same. "What are you driving at?" "This one 's on me," he answered, yelling for the waiter and reaching across and wringing my reluctant hand at the same moment. "We 've got the Governor stung, Spur. Now listen. We 're going to give your dad absent treatment for hardness of the heart. We 're going to make the tear of pity start unbidden to his eye. We 're going to push him into a corner and tell him to behave. See ? It 's a grand, a sublime idea, and it 's got Dowie backed off the map." "Go on," I put in, beginning to warm up. "Well it 's this way," Jim continued. "When I want to make people buy a new soap, what do I do ? Do I plead with them, beg them, try to persuade them with tears that cost from one to five dollars per pearly, agate tear, to buy that 52 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL soap? Nit, not, no. Nittings, nottings, nay- ings. That used to be the gag, when an adver tiser wanted to give Mr. Purchaser a psychological impulse toward his soap. Do we do it now ? Certainly not. We give him the direct com mand, and he buys it like a little child." "The direct command!" I broke in. "Say, Jamie boy, do you need a flashlight to see what would happen to anyone who gave the Governor the direct command, or the polite request, or any other old thing ?" "Oh, bosh! I knew you 'd say that. They all do when I spring it on 'em for the first time. But let me show you how it works. I buy a column in one of these million a month magazines where space is as valuable as corner lots in heaven, and every word a priceless solitaire in a Tiffany setting. You don't use that kind of language to hand out goo-goo talk, or to sing lullabies to people. No, sir. You start off with a simple, manly statement to the effect that Soper's Soap is the purest, the most cleansing, the most emol lient, the most antiseptic, the most satisfying and the most durable soap on the market; and you wind up short and crisp: Take home a cake to-night. Does he take home a cake to night ? Certainly not. He just says 'Rats' and buys the same old inferior article. But every JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 53 morning when he opens his daily, and every week when he dips into his weekly, and every month when he looks into his monthly, he gets that direct command, Take home a cake to-night. And one night, when he 's in a hurry and is n't thinking just what he 's doing, he rushes slam- bang into a drug store and yells: * Gimme a cake of Soper's Soap/ He has n't had a thing to do with it. The direct command has simply gotten in its deadly work, and given him a psy chological impulse, and, by jings! you 've made a customer! Now, do you see, you lunkhead ?" It certainly did sound reasonable, and I Ve never needed much coaxing to sit in any game that had a fair sporting element about it. In a minute I was asking what the ante was. "Let's see," said Jim; "you've got ten, have n't you ? And you 've got to cough up two of that for the paper which your foolish old Chicago friend holds. That leaves eight. Then, in case you have to stand a siege, you 'd better hold out another. For while I can promise to bring down your dad, I can't promise to make him forgive you for it in a hurry. That leaves seven. Seven ahem! It might be done for seven, though it would be a near thing. Ye-es, I reckon we could fetch him for seven." We broke away then, to meet for dinner at 54 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Jim's club, where we were to lay out our plan of campaign. "You see," said Jim as he left me, "the whole game is to get the command into a short, crisp phrase that your dad will understand, but that outsiders won't tumble to. If we do it thorough, we 're bound to stir up a lot of talk and excite curiosity, but I '11 put everything through our office, so that no one but us two and your dad need know what it all means. The papers won't bother to look into it for a story, because they 're so blamed wise they '11 think some one is trying to play up a book he 's going to spring, or some stale gag like that. But to be on the safe side, and to keep any reporter from getting after you about your part in that Chicago racket, I '11 fix it with Tom Carothers to put you up for a week or two, so you won't have to register at a hotel." It took us a few days to hit on a satisfactory form of the direct command, and to think out enough different ways of conveying it. Jim began at seven sharp, one Monday morning, by calling the Governor to the telephone and shouting into his ear: "Stop that strike, dad" He cussed so fierce that Jim backed away without hanging up. I had fixed it with the butler by giving him ten, and when the eggs were brought to father at breakfast, he saw, neatly lettered on each shell: 'Stop that strike, Dad!" JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 55 "Stop that strike, dad" The butler managed to explain it and keep his job, but he told me after ward that, much as he liked me, never again. We had taken a whole page in the Governor's pet paper, and, as soon as he opened it, he saw in enormous black letters, "Stop that strike, dad" The direct command stared at him from every bill board along the Sixth Avenue L as he went to his office; greeted him in his mail; was delivered by messengers; sent in telegrams; and finally flashed all night long on the sky, where he could n't miss it whenever he looked out of a window. It was simply great! Of course, I could n't see how it was working, but on the second day I began to get plenty of indirect testimony. The telephone in the house was disconnected; messenger boys refused to take notes to father's office, even when offered five dollar tips; and letters that bore all the marks of being sacredly confidential were opened by a secretary. On the third, influence had been brought to bear so that the newspaper refused our ads, and the Governor rode to the oi'Hce in a limousine. But every time he checked us in one direction, Jim sprang a new one on him. That boy was simply tireless in my interests, hardly taking time to eat and sleep. On the fourth morning, Jim came bustling in JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 55 "Stop that strike, dad" The butler managed to explain it and keep his job, but he told me after ward that, much as he liked me, never again. We had taken a whole page in the Governor's pet paper, and, as soon as he opened it, he saw in enormous black letters, "Stop that strike, dad" The direct command stared at him from every bill board along the Sixth Avenue L as he went to his office; greeted him in his mail; was delivered by messengers; sent in telegrams; and finally flashed all night long on the sky, where he could n't miss it whenever he looked out of a window. It was simply great! Of course, I could n't see how it was working, but on the second day I began to get plenty of indirect testimony. The telephone in the house was disconnected; messenger boys refused to take notes to father's office, even when offered five dollar tips; and letters that bore all the marks of being sacredly confidential were opened by a secretary. On the third, influence had been brought to bear so that the newspaper refused our ads, and the Governor rode to the office in a limousine. But every time he checked us in one direction, Jim sprang a new one on him. That boy was simply tireless in my interests, hardly taking time to eat and sleep. On the fourth morning, Jim came bustling in 56 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL all of a glow. " She 's working fine, Spur," he cried as soon as he saw me. "Your dad has had the ads traced to my office, and last night his lawyer called at the house to threaten me. Says he 's going to send me up for twenty years for conspiracy, attempted blackmail, and in growing toe-nails. I don't believe the Governor can last the week out. We 're giving him the psychological impulse of the century!" "A psychological impulse to lick me on sight," I grumbled, for my private advices about the Governor represented him as being in an abso lutely bloodthirsty mood, and travelling at the rate of a mile a minute away from the right answer to the direct command. But Jim reassured me and proved that the Governor's rage was a hopeful sign; that it was simply a scientific impossibility for him to hold out. So by noon we were both at it harder than ever. When I got back to my room I was so dogged tired that I thought I would stretch out for a little snooze, but I had hardly assumed the first posi tion for taking a well-earned rest when Horton, the Governor's private secretary, burst in on me. "Oh, Mr. Jack!" he cried when he saw me on the couch. "You must come with me to the house at once." "What is it?" I asked, sitting up and feeling JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 57 good and scared. A picture of the Governor falling in a fit and sending for me, that he might bestow a dying blessing, had flashed through my brain. "What is it ? Has anything happened to father ?" "Mr. Spurlock is well, though a trifle er er irritated. But a very distressing complication, that calls for your presence at once, has arisen in the unfortunate er er differences between you and your father. But I '11 answer any further questions as we go along." Once in the motor, I turned to the secretary and said: "Now, Horton, tell me; what 's all this about ?" "Oh, Mr. Jack," he answered reproachfully, "how can you ask ?'' "How can I find out if I don't ask, idiot?" I answered, beginning to feel a little irritated myself. " It 's about the reporters. Oh, Mr. Jack, your father thought you had too much pride to air family differences in the columns of the news papers!" "Well, so I have, confound you; what about the reporters ? I don't know a blame thing about them." He saw from my manner that I meant it. "That 's very remarkable; very remarkable," he commented. "When your father got home this 58 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL evening there were six reporters in the library waiting for him, and each sent up a sealed letter, addressed to him in the handwriting of the er gentleman who has been so prominent in your recent ah ah activities. When he broke the seals, he found that each envelope contained a sheet of paper, bearing the single sentence " "'Stop that strike, dad,"' I finished. "Exactly. And, as your father has inferred that you were connected with the er-unfortunate publicity which has been given to that phrase, he, not unnaturally, connected you with the notes and thought he 'd better find out how much you 'd said before he saw any reporters." I saw in a flash what Jim had been up to, and what I did n't see he told me afterward. Of course, he knew about the Governor's horror of publicity, and of my determination not to let any thing about our differences creep into the papers. More than all else, father would have hated to have it come out that his own son was a bona fide member of a union. Of course, if I went back to Chicago and tried to help the strikers, he took a certain risk, but I reckon he 'd figured it out that Rawden had so thoroughly discredited me with them, that I could never get near enough to a union man to explain, or to make him believe me if I did. But he knew that I would n't have any JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 59 trouble about getting a hearing in a New York newspaper. Jim had figured this all out and had dropped in on half a dozen newspaper men, told each of them that Con Spurlock had a big financial story which was about ripe, and had given each a "special letter" that would help him to get the news. I should n't have let Jim do this if I 'd known it, but so long as he had done it, I thought it best to see what would happen. So I explained rather chestily to Horton: "Of course, I didn't send those notes; but it was done by one of my authorised agents." The motor was run into the garage, and I was smuggled into the house through the back way. The Governor was upstairs simmering and blowing ofF steam at intervals. Without even a "Good evening," or a "How are you?" he got right down to business; but I noticed that he no longer handled himself as if he were talking to a small boy. "What have you told those reporters?" he demanded. "Nothing yet." I should n't have added that yet; for I would n't have told those reporters a word if I 'd lost the game a thousand times over, but it was dog eat dog with both of us. "Will you agree not to tell them anything not to tell anyone the truth about this Chicago 6o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL affair; not to deny that you were acting as my representative when you stirred up the strike ? And will you promise to stop hounding me if " " By Jove, sir, that 's going altogether too far to force me to brand myself a sneak like that yellow dog Rawden!" "That yellow dog Rawden, as you call him, is a good and faithful servant of the house which employs him. You were a traitor to it. But that 's all beside the point. Will you agree to these terms and call off your reporters ?" "And if I do?" "I '11 ring up Rawden on the long-distance and tell him to reinstate the strikers on the old basis." "Done," I answered, starting to turn away. I felt a little choky, and wanted to get out. I was n't very proud of myself or of my victory, and I was n't very proud of father, either; yet if he 'd shown just a glimmer of feeling for me in his eyes, I 'd have given in without terms. But his voice was as hard as ever, as he called after me: "One moment; I should like the reporters to see us together." "As you wish," I answered. So side by side, and smiling, we entered the library where the reporters were waiting. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 61 "Good evening, gentlemen," began the Gov ernor, all urbanity. "My son, Jack," and he nodded toward me. "Now, what 's all this about ?" The reporters had been talking together, and, evidently, they themselves had begun to enter tain doubts as to what it was all about, but their spokesman led off with: "Why, we understand, Mr. Spurlock, that you have an important piece of news to give out " The Governor broke into a hearty laugh. "I 'm afraid that some one has been playing a practical joke on you, gentlemen. I have absolutely nothing to say that could be of the slightest interest to the public." "Perhaps your son," another reporter ventured, scenting a chance for something, "can tell us more about his experiences during the strike in Chicago ?" "I 'm sorry," I answered, "but there 's noth ing that I can add to what has already been published. My father tells me that the whole thing will probably be settled in a day or two, as he has instructed his manager to offer the men their old places on the old terms." "It never having been my wish or intention," the Governor concluded, "to work a hardship 6z JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL on the men; but simply to assert my unalterable conviction that the American manufacturer must be left free to run his own business, and the American workman allowed to make his own terms with his employer, without the interference or dictation of any union. Good evening, gentle men." As the last reporter filed out, the Governor wiped the smile from his face and turned to me. "I forgot to say," he began, as I picked up my hat, "that, while I have promised to take back all the men, I must make one exception." "Myself?" "Yourself!" and the Governor bowed me out. CHAPTER IV IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL MEETS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE WERE you ever, revered reader, in a place where you wondered whether you 'd rather have a kiss or a ham sandwich ? Were you ever so mixed up that you did n't know whether that gone sensation was due to a full heart or an empty stomach ? Have you ever waked up and tried to decide which dream you liked better the one in which the Onliest snuggled up against you and intimated that you were Alpha and Omega, the dearest and the duckiest; or that one in which the waiter is just taking the covers off a double porterhouse, medium, with fresh mushrooms on top and potatoes au gratin on the side ? Have you ever thought of her sunny curls and "two-sunny-side- up" in the same cerebration? Have you ever been broke and heartbroken the same night ? If you have n't, you 've never really been up against it. I have been. Thirty days after my last interview with the Governor, I had decided that, all superficial 63 64 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL evidence of prosperity to the contrary, the country had struck the worst hard times since the panic of ninety-three. That every one in the world except me had the price to eat at Sherry's, simply intensified the business depression. Once I had driven along Fifth Avenue, wondering why every one did n't have money it was so plentiful. That night I had walked home wondering where in the deuce all those fellows had found enough to build their big houses it was so scarce. And no one, not even Echo, had answered where; for when a fellow's down, no one, not even Echo, gives a hoot. This is a cruel world, as any man on his way to the dentist's can find out. Perhaps an acquaint ance will stop him for a moment, concealing a heartless snicker behind his hand, as he tells the sufferer that his jaw is swelled up like an eggplant and asks him if it hurts; but, once assured that it does hurt, he hurries on with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes, and a callous, "Better have it out, old man." The whole world is having a good time, attending to its petty busi ness, going to the matinee, laughing over its foolish jokes, as if there were no such awful thing in the next block as a pair of forceps, or a low-browed, muscular brute waiting there to pull somebody's darling's face a foot out of plumb. And if a JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 65 fellow can't get sympathy for a swollen face that is a perfect signboard of suffering, how can an unostentatious organ at least mine is unosten tatious like his stomach, expect it ? I won't forget in a hurry how, when I got back to my humble room and bath in the St. Regis, after my first day in the real trouble belt, I sat around listening to the orchestra seven floors down as it played, "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie," to a lot of fellows who were buzzing pretty girls between bites of their fourth meal since morning, utterly oblivious to the fact that, seven floors up, there was a young man who'd go Baa-a-ah! at the sight of a lamb chop. And how, when I 'd temporarily exhausted the possi bilities in this form of anguish, I 'd reflect that, four blocks away, the Most Beautiful One was making up her mind that I was a pup, and that there was no way of changing her decision, because she could prove it. To explain the Most Beautiful One, I must re turn to that last vacation before my Alma Mater turned me from her doors and told me that I was no longer a che-ild of hers. I 'd been invited to dine with the Storers, rotten rich and deadly dull, and the Governor had intercepted my polite, "Not on your life," and made me change it to a, "Sure thing de-elighted." How little does youth 66 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL appreciate its blessings! as some other man whose meal ticket had just expired once remarked. The grasshopper is n't the only damphool in the good old summer-time, when the busy little ants are hiving it up against a bull market. I was the only poor person at the dinner, and the footman would n't have let me in if he had n't been tipped off that I had expectations. It was a gathering of the hope-to-get-in and the almost- in just-rich. Mrs. Storer, standing on a forty- thousand-dollar rug, under a sixty-thousand- dollar near-Raphael, in the hundred-thousand- dollar grand salon of her two-million-dollar chateau by Bill D'Obbins out of Mansart and looking with her hawser of pearls and her peck of tasty little Kohinoors like the Queen of the Amazons leading the Grand March, intro duced me to over a billion dollars. First there was Riggs five hundred million, then Nortiger two hundred million, and consequently only two-fifths as great and as good a man as Riggs, and receiving from every one present only two- fifths as much deference. Last and least came Jones, a shamefaced, ill-at-ease pauper, with only twenty-five million, who had to be deferential to every one. I made a horrid faux pas right at the start by speaking in a hundred-million-dollar tone to a two-hundred-million-dollar man, and JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 67 was properly snubbed by him. I could n't figure out why I 'd been invited, unless they were going to have a small game after dinner and wanted to use me as the buck. I had just received a fifteen-hundred-dollar sentence from Riggs his income is a hundred dollars a minute or a second, I forget which and was handing back a thirty-cent joke in exchange when my hostess spoke, and turning, I saw Anita Grey for the first time. She was frightfully conspicuous in that bunch of fat, fussy, plush-upholstered dowagers, for she had n't so much as a diamond butterfly in her coronet of brown braids. But she had the most beautiful violet eyes, and the longest dark lashes, and the clearest white-and-rose skin. Lord ! Lord ! whenever I think of her as she stood there that night, I want to throw in the vox humana and use all the trembly notes in the pipes. Not that Anita was a simple little village maiden. She was New York not Pittsburg- New York, but a girl who 'd learned to walk on Fifth Avenue, the daughter of poor, but very smart parents, who had brought her up in genteel poverty on the income of a million, in a set where the million should have been the income. So much came to me as I was bowing and murmuring her name, and then I piloted 68 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL her over several hundred thousand dollars' worth of rugs and into the hundred-thousand-dollar dining-room, hung with the two-hundred-thou sand-dollar not-quite Gobelins. And, on the way, I mentally cast-off, forswore, abjured and utterly repudiated all other girls, past, present or possible. I suppose I was a little hasty about opening up the subject, but I 'd been reading one of those Chambers yarns in which the hero always makes a quick get-away; and then, too, when I thought of the years and years that I had n't known her, and of the chances I 'd been taking all through them, it scared me to death. I simply felt that I must n't lose another minute. "Why haven't I ever met you before?" I demanded in one of those low, tense tones, almost before we were seated. It was a bum start. I 'd thought it was a Chambers sentence till I got it out, and then I knew in a minute that I 'd been cribbing from Laura Jean Libbey. Anita looked mildly surprised. "I really don't know," she answered. It was like trying to board an iceberg, but she was a mighty sweet girl at heart, because, as I slipped and floundered around for a new footing, she added, "Perhaps it 's because I have n't been out very long." Yet, to my certain knowledge, she 'd been "out" JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 69 three seasons. And, to her certain knowledge, I 'd never been "in." I got my second wind as we began to eat off the fifty-thousand-dollar gold plate, and mixed it up quite successfully in a general discussion over the outrageous demands of labour. Anita and I, at our end of the table, were in a particu larly rich little pocket, and every time anyone opened his mouth the room rang with the flying double eagles. I scored heavily with Riggs, who likes to think that he stands in with the Lord, by quoting from Byron's Corsair, "The many still must labour for the one," and telling him he 'd find it in Jeremiah li: I. He was so affected at finding that Jeremiah stood for him that he started to cry into his soup, and then saved five hundred dollars by forcing back the pearly tears, as he told me about the difficulty he was having in making ends meet, without trenching on the capital which his pious enter prises needed. Across the way, the Rector of St. Aurea's, where a pew costs ten thousand a year, and who did n't have an in-curve on his person from his mouth to the end of his waistcoat, sputtered his sympathy through a mouthful of terrapin. He knew a thing or two about the pains and penalties of stewardship himself, for he had sanctified a few million by marrying them. 70 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Why, Mr. Riggs," he finally got out as he got the terrapin down, "the ingratitude of our work ing classes passes belief. Every one is prosperous and well paid, and yet the press is full of abom inable lies about the labouring man's having diffi culty in making ends meet on his wages. I Ve been rector of St. Aurea's now for ten years, and I Ve yet to see any of the want and suffering that loose-mouthed ranters talk about here in New York." "But, Doctor," I ventured, "you did n't expect to find want in St. Aurea's, did you ?" The rector looked vinegar and answered oil: "My dear, dear young friend," and my years dropped from me till I wondered why Mrs. Storer did n't ring for the nurse and have me put to bed, "when you have had the experience of Mr. Riggs and your honoured father in dealing with these questions, you will learn to look below the surface, and not jump to hasty conclusions. It may be true that here and there are isolated cases of want, but they are due in this splendid time of prosperity to regrettable habits of drink and thriftlessness. Capital to-day leaves no ex cuse for idleness and want. It has a greater mission than mere money-making. It works, if my dear friend Riggs will permit me to say it, con amore for the higher good of our beloved country." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 71 "Well, Doctor," I replied, "there's no doubt about the con part, anyway.'* I caught an amused gleam in Anita's eyes. But it cost me the votes of Riggs and the rector, who dropped me as a lost soul, and began dis cussing a plan to further the Lord's work in China by boosting rents in the slum tenements owned by St. Aurea's. After that I was simply a castaway on a desert island, than which there is no more delightful situation in the world, provided Anita is the other castaway. I was fairly prudent and re strained, and made such good progress that we were on very friendly terms by the time our ices were in front of us. Then Anita, in speaking about the horse show, made some careless, but too, too familiar reference to "Brooke." I could n't help it. I went up in the air like an old wife happening by the office and discovering her husband dictating to a new blonde peacherino, instead of old reliable. "Brooke?" I questioned sharply; "Brooke who ?" "Brooke Churchill," she answered, looking amused. " Oh, the fat little bachelor, who rubbers at the girls from a window of the, Ascot Club every after noon ! Friend of your father's ?" 72 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Anita had stopped looking amused, but I was so fatuous that I could only see that she was looking pretty in a new way. "Not particularly but a friend of mine." "A very good friend ?" I persisted, a little alarmed by something unspoken in her tone. "Why, yes," she smiled; "a very good friend. In fact, I 'm half expecting to marry him one of these days." "You marry that " I stammered. Anita interrupted with a little laugh. Then, very sweetly: "What is your class, Mr Spurlock ? Naughty ?" and stood up, for Mrs. Storer was giving the signal to the women. Have you ever, beloved reader, beaten the loud bazoo and invited the Most Beautiful One to come into the big tent and witness an exhibition of your feats of strength and daring ? Have you ever buzzed her for two hours, modestly and tactfully intimating, as opportunity offered, that, if she were looking for a kind, considerate, thought ful husband a man of broad views, wide experience and large affairs you were her huckleberry ? Have you ever gazed into her timid, violet orbs and handed out beautiful thoughts about being in the true knight business, and that, if there were an opening for a Sir Galahad on her staff, you would like to apply for the JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 73 vacancy; only to have her tell you to be a good boy and run along and play with little brother ? And have you ever gone home and slowly bar becued yourself on your virtuous couch, basting yourself first on one side by recalling every asinine word you had spoken, and then on the other by remembering every dying-calf glance you had given ? If you have n't, you 've never been truly refined by suffering. I have been. I did n't get another chance to talk with Anita that night, but I did the next and the next in short, I made meeting Anita the business of my life until I was exported to Chicago. And I only went there at all because I had a vague idea, carefully concealed about my person, that I should make a million in a month or two and marry her. If father and the others who have accused me of being lazy and indifferent to busi ness could only have seen how diligently I prose cuted the business of meeting Anita, they would have been proud of me. And I made some progress, too, for we grew to be awfully good friends, and little Brooke Churchill became insanely jealous, though how groundlessly no one knew better than I. Still I humoured his delu sion, for it was a pleasure to feel that I was n't doing all the suffering. Of course, I kept right on meeting Anita after 74 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL I got back from Chicago, and then after the Governor and I had our falling out. Altogether, it was six months of the most delicious misery imaginable. I talked with her, laughed with her, danced with her, dined with her, but I never really proposed to her. For at first, when I showed signs of growing sentimental, she had a way of laughing at me which was very disconcert ing to a young man who was accustomed to having his proposals taken seriously; and then when I saw, after my break with the governor, that she would throw over Brooke Churchill and marry me, I would n't ask her. I think that she liked me better than Churchill, but I felt that it was first of all a choice between fortunes. After that, it counted with her, no doubt, that the man who went with the Spurlock millions was younger, and had more hair and less girth than the one who went with the Churchill millions; but it hurt me to feel that I was winning on comparative waist measurements. Anita was n't really mercenary in her ideas. She was the dearest and the sweetest and the most generous girl, and if she had been in a city and a set where girls were allowed to fall in love foolishly and to go in for housekeeping in cottages and all that sort of thing, she could have been just as adorably foolish and impractical as the JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 75 next one- But she was a well-bred New York girl, with well-trained emotions and a well-dis ciplined heart. She 'd been brought up to believe that certain things were absolutely necessary to a well-bred girl's happiness, and that marriage was the art of getting them. After one was suitably married it was time enough to think of falling in love with some other well-bred girl's husband. No, that is n't fair to Anita she was n't that sort, at least. I knew she 'd play fair, even if she made a bad bargain, but she did n't propose to make one I had been taking afternoon tea with Anita one day since giving the Governor the direct command my principal business had been taking tea with Anita when I asked her pointblank why she was going to marry Brooke Churchill. "Of course, it 's his money," I suggested, hoping that she would deny it, but prepared to be jealous if she did. "Of course." " Is the beggar so rich, then ?" I knew he had twenty million. "Oh! he hasn't a swollen fortune, but he's rich enough to afford the simple comforts and an occasional little luxury." "Like marrying you, for instance?" "Ye-es; if you care to put it that way." 76 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "I don't care to put it that way; I hate it that way; and you really hate it, too. It 's not you, Anita, but it 's this rotten New York, that makes us all want things that no sane human being has any use for." " Is Saul too, among the prophets ?" she quoted laughingly. Anita was never serious when I was. "Yes; if you mean that I 'm beginning to see how silly all this rot is, and what an ass I 've been to think that it 's the main business of life." I should have told her then about my split-up with the Governor, and that he had disinherited me. I started in to do so and had another think. As usual, when I have a second think on a matter of principle, I thought wrong. "Please don't try to convert me," Anita an swered. "If it is silly, it 's a very pleasant sort of silliness and I simply can't be poor, and live in the suburbs with two maids, and a hired brougham to pay my calls in." "But you're not poor, Anita," I protested. "Your governor's got enough to give you every thing that any human being ought to have, or has a right to have. Why should you " " Why Jack Spurlock ! " Anita broke in ; " what 's happened to you ? I honestly believe you Ve turned Socialist. And what do you rnsan by JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 77 preaching to me about the blessings of poverty, when you 're the most extravagant boy in the world and in training to become sinfully rich ?" Right there I made St. Anthony look like a two-spot, and, for the first time in my life, resisted a temptation that really amounted to something. Anita would have taken my money and me, and if I had gone to the Governor, recanted, and told him that I was engaged to Miss Grey, he would have given me a seven-figure blessing. For, while he was too busy to bother about society himself, the thought that his son was going to marry into one of the really smart New York families would have swelled him up like a boiled prune. But I passed on the terms and drew fresh cards. "I mean it, Anita. I've been doing a whole lot of thinking since I left college no, don't laugh and I 'm beginning to see some things differently. Throw this fellow over. Why should you marry him ?" "Please don't be tiresome, Jack. I 'm marry ing him because of the increased cost of living, and from a filial desire to shield my parent from want in his old age. He J s such a poor guesser that your father's likely to take his money away from him any day, unless I can persuade him to stay out of Wall Street. He *s a perfect simpleton 78 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL about business. Ten years ago we really had quite a snug little pile. But since then every one else has been getting ahead, while we 've simply been standing still. So we 're shockingly poor as things go." I got out quick. If I 'd stayed another five minutes I 'd have been engaged to Anita myself, and have gone home miserable because she could bring herself to marry me for the Governor's millions. As it was, I hurried off, raging be cause she was going to marry Brooke Churchill for his. I'd been on the hop ever since morning, for being in love with Anita was a strenuous calling, leaving one little leisure for the pleasur.es that fall to the lot of those who indulge in the peaceful pursuit of commerce. I wondered what one of those self-made men, who brag so vulgarly about the long hours they worked when they were youngsters, would have said if he had ever had to put in a day like mine sprinting through miles and miles of streets to find Anita in the morning; riding for hours and hours through Central Park to meet Anita in the afternoon; dancing across acres and acres of ball-room floor to see Anita in the evening. I 'd been too busy to eat even, that day, so when I got back to the St. Regis, where I 'd taken a room after giving the Governor JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 79 the direct command, I ordered the last three meals I 'd missed and started in to catch up. When it came to paying the waiter, it struck me that my roll looked shockingly emaciated. I made a hasty count of the surplus as soon as I got to my room, and verified my worst fears. I always do verify them when I indulge my curi osity. The change which I had received from Jim Carson, after paying for the direct command campaign that last thousand of poor Aunt Julia's legacy was down to two hundred. Something must be done, and I could n't do the Governor. Carver, that solemn prig who attended to his legal matters, had been bothering me for a week with an absurd proposal that I go West to Uncle Bill's ranch, be a good Indian, and promise not to leave the reservation without the permission of the Great Father. Of course, that was absurd, and I had told him so, but he had kept on coming back to press the matter. The last time I had spoken so hastily that I had really managed to offend him, which was quite a feat, if he thought you had money or ever might have, and he had n't been back since. I don't imagine that his report had helped me any with the Governor, but that did n't matter. I 'd decided to play the game for a while without depending on an ace up my sleeve. 80 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL I started right in to be wise as a serpent with what money I had left, and as usual, when I try the serpent act, I got stung. I marched down to the office and paid two weeks in advance on my room one hundred and forty dollars. It 's a wonder I did n't change to the suite with the ten-thousand-dollar bed. Then I crossed Anita off my visiting list, and started in to look for work. I began by being willing to accept a position, and wound up, inside of a fortnight, by begging for a job. Until I tried to make strangers give up real money for my services, I never dreamed how utterly indifferent people could be to the chance of securing them. Some men would n't listen to me after I told them that I was a Harvard man, and some would n't pay any attention until I did, but both kinds slipped out of my grasp after I explained just what my accomplishments were. I was made to feel that I was no good by every employer in New York, from Pierpont Morgan to Bim the Button- man, and the only difference was that some were more impolite about it than others. They gave me all the reasons then existing for not hiring men, and, to fit my special case, they went on and invented new ones. If I said that I was Con Spurlock's son, that queered me on the go-off, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 81 for why should the young prince be looking for any old job ? And if I did n't say that I was Con Spurlock's son, that queered me, too, for I could n't give references. One way I was threatened with arrest as an impostor, and the other I was run off the premises as a suspicious character. All this time I had been economising, but not fast enough, it turned out. I kept cutting my orders until I got down to an entree for dinner, but by ten o'clock that night I was so blamed hungry that it cost me five-sixty to ward off a fainting spell. Then flowers are expensive in February, and, while I stuck to my determination not to see Anita, I really could n't bring myself to cut off her violets. At the end of the week, when my money was all gone, I wore a path to a cosey little hock shop in Sixth Avenue, and wrung the reluctant coin to keep me going from a turnip-hearted Hebrew, until I was down to a business suit, my evening clothes, and the necessary linen. Of course, I could have signed checks at the hotel for a few weeks, but, when they 'd finally found out that I could n't pay, the bill would have been sent to the Governor. Or I could have borrowed till my friends found out that I really needed money. It 's a curious thing, but a fellow who 's been a 82 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL liberal spender finds it awfully hard to borrow when he goes broke. I suppose his friends are afraid he '11 waste it. There was only one man Jim Carson that I could go to without it 's all working back to father, and I was saving him for the last ditch. CHAPTER V IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL REACHES THE LAST DITCH ONE morning I woke up in my ten-dollar- a-day room with a vague feeling that something was going to happen, but I was mis taken. It had happened the night before, when the prince of pawnbrokers had lent me two dollars and I had thrown all my good resolutions to the winds and had gone on a mad beefsteak debauch. Now there 's one difference between a beefsteak bat and all other kinds you 're broke just the same, but you don't have to go through your clothes to find it out. I knew before I got up that, unless I 'd been burglarised while I slept, I had a solitary, inestimably precious ten-cent piece under my pillow. I devoted all that morning to a careful and systematic canvass of Sixth Avenue, and, when my researches were over, I had mapped out the most complete little free-lunch route in New York City. I breakfasted finally in the one where the management spread the board with most liberal hand, and I kept right on 83 84 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL breakfasting until a coarse, ill-mannered employee hissed in my ear: "Buy again, Clarence, or it 's the bung-starter for yours." I did n't choose to buy again, nor did I care to have the bung-starter for mine. So I made for the street, without, I trust, showing any undue haste or apprehension, though I could n't resist a glance back over my shoulder as I went through the door. That, I have since learned, was a faux pas, and would have warranted the gentle manly barkeep, had he seen it, in concluding that I was persona non grata in our best saloons. It 's curious how a fellow will swallow insults when he 's on his uppers, for which he 'd lick anyone if he had money in his pocket. "A man's a man for a' that," but he does n't assert it with quite the same conviction when he 's lost the guinea stamp. At six, I dropped by number two on my list, and dined, having due regard this time for the proprieties of the set in which I was moving. Luckily, the place was full of honest working-folk, making their simple preparations to take home their empty dinner-pails full, or to go home full with their empty dinner-pails. It was awfully interesting quite like a cartoon in Puck, or one of those ripping speeches that Senator Beve- ridge makes to the populace. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 85 When I got back to the St. Regis, I put on my evening clothes, and sat around the lobby hoping that something, I did n't quite know what and did n't very much care, might turn up to help me out of my hole. But at heart I had the sickening certainty that nothing would; and nothing did, except a bell-boy to touch me for a telephone message that I had n't paid for, and an acquaintance to borrow a hundred. It put me in a glow of pride to think that any one im agined I had the price of a telephone call; and I felt so chesty over being touched for a hundred that the man left with an unshakable conviction that I had it, but was too mean to give up. But my elation soon simmered off, and by ten I would have sold my precious birthright to do as I pleased if only Satan, in the guise of the Governor's lawyer, had happened by to tempt me. Yet, even Satan, who had always been hanging around when I had plenty of money, seemed to have no use for me now that I was broke, which led me to reflect that there must be a good deal of compulsory virtue in the world. I woke up next morning dreaming that a regal repast was being served to me in bed, so of course I turned over to finish the dream and to order some strawberries which the waiter had overlooked. Just to show what rotten luck I was playing in, 86 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL I dreamed the second time that I was starving, and no food within a thousand miles of me. And when I woke up, it was no dream at that. I was at the last ditch, sure enough, and it was full of mud. So after a refreshing pitcher of Croton water, I shaved and dressed carefully, and started to walk the dreary miles downtown to Jim's. All the way I was haunted by a depres sing fear, which grew into a certainty as I got nearer the office, that I should find Jim out of town. It was n't quite so bad as that, but the lazy dog was n't down yet, the boy explained, only he called him Mr. Carson. Probably Jim had been up late the night before, stuffing and guzzling. I wandered off toward the East Side, killing time and raising a maddening appetite by looking in at restaurant windows and wondering which I 'd rather have the double porterhouse mar bled with firm, white fat, or the pair of exhibition canvasbacks. I 'd always taken food for granted, but apparently there were conditions under which a man could n't get it except by begging or stealing. After that morning I can never feel quite the same about some things. I 'd missed a meal often enough before, but I 'd always known just where it was if I 'd wanted to take the trouble to go after it. And I 'd been hungry before, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 87 but it had always been a polite hunger. Now, for the first time, I was looking that old wolf Want in the eyes, and beginning vaguely to under stand why men lie and cheat and steal for a few pitiful dollars. It takes a man who 's been born rich to be a really tight wad, but I 'd often noticed curious and inconsistent streaks of meanness in even the most generous men who 'd come up from poverty. Now I knew that it was because a man who has once felt the wolf-fear can never quite forget it. No matter how rich he may become, every now and then he fancies that he sees the wolf skulking in the shadow ahead, waiting for a chance to pull him down. Right there I decided that once I got my rubber band around a neat roll of the needful again, I 'd hustle over to the nearest trust company and create a beefsteak endowment fund, with me as the endowee, or whatever they call the boy who draws the tenderloins every quarter. I was a long way from Jim's office by the time I had worked this out, and in front of one of those cheap restaurants where the waiters are all trained acrobats and the patrons all sword-swallowers. Still, it looked mighty good to me, and the neigh bourhood was permeated with such a solid, satisfying smell of fried onions that I hesitated 88 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL to leave it. When at last I started to turn away, a small sign, swinging beside the door, caught my eye: Waiter Wanted "Waiter wanted," I repeated slowly. "Why not ? Waiters eat. By gad, I '11 do it; I *ve got to do it; so here goes," and I dived into the restau rant. I found the proprietor talking to the lady cashier, who was snapping out her answers on the upward movement of her gum. "Well, what do you want?" he asked, turning toward me and evidently prepared to answer: "Those eggs were strictly fresh, and you 've got to pay for 'em." "I 'm the waiter you 're looking for," I replied. He ran me over with his eye, and I could see that he did n't share my confidence. "A hell of a waiter you are," he finally brought out, and spat his contempt into a handy cuspidor. "On the contrary," I returned, "I 've had experience in some of our best restaurants " "Bein* waited on, by the looks of them nails and the creases in them pants," snapped the lady cashier, though her glance was not altogether unkindly. I made a mental note to disguise my nails for JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 89 the part next time, and admitted: "Well, you 're not so far wrong, but whatever appearances say, I need work, and I need it quick. Give me a show and I '11 make good." I talked to the man, but I looked at the girl, for I felt that if I were to get a job it would be with her help. That was where I decided that if I ever had a son he 'd be taught plain cooking and waiting, so that when he got out to support his poor old father he would n't have to own up to being a dub at everything except the classic philosophers. Yet that 's what I 'd started out with to make a living, and without so blame much of that. "Oh, I can't be bothered," the man began impatiently, but the girl cut in. "Aw, give the gent a show, Bill. Can't you see he 's up against it for fair ? It won't do no harm to try him till a regular turns up, anyway." The girl was the real boss, as she always is, and the man finally gave a grumbling assent. "Well, go back and take your coat off and get an apron. We '11 try you on," he said. "And tell the chef to give you your breakfast, Ferdinand," the cashier added. God bless that girl! She chewed gum, which I hate; and wore a rat in her pompadour, which I loathe; and said "I have went," which is the unpardonable sin. Anyway you sized her up 90 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL she was in as bad taste as a diamond stud in a dirty shirt, but she was certainly Miss Abou-ben- Adhem with me that day. All the precious memories of life are n't laid away in lavender; one of mine will always be redolent of fried onions. And speaking of precious memories that break fast! After I had exhausted the patience of the cook, and he was a singularly irascible man for one who could have all he wanted to eat, he chased me out on the floor in a clean apron at least he said it was clean, and it was by comparison with those of the other waiters. The "early lunchers" were already coming in, and the room rang with cries of "One embalmed, with a wreath," meaning, I discoverd, corned-beef hash with a poached egg on top, and similar euphe misms that stirred the spirit of emulation in me. After all, Pandora's box is n't so very deep, and a fellow has only one set of emotions for all places and all occasions. In my apron I felt very much as I had back in Akron, when I walked out on a ball-room floor wearing my first dress suit a little sheepish, a little ill-at-ease, and wondering whether every one was n't on to me. First I went over to the cashier for inspection, and she nodded her approval. "You '11 do, Ferdinand," was her comment. "Now take JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 91 that gent's order and remember this ain't no Waldorf. Our customers expect the boys to have a little snap and jolly their grub along/' I went to the gentleman and inquired his pleasure with: "Well, Sport, what '11 it be?" a form of inquiry which appeared to possess the requisite amount of snap, for he responded with a demand for chops, eggs, and a glass of milk. Thinking to please my patroness by showing her that I had caught the idea, I sang out to the cook, "Baa! Baa! Cluck! Cluck! Moo-o-o!" and glanced fatuously at her for approval. But, instead of beaming back, she called me to her and said: "Cut it out, Ferdinand. Them Call- of-the-Wild dicky-bird stunts is barred in this joint. We ain't runnin' no livery-stable. But everything except nature fakin' goes, just so you remember to always be the gentleman." I was rather crestfallen, but I promised her to remember, and hurried off to wait on some new customers. And I got along without further breaks until some of my "lunchers" began to pay off. Most of them took their checks to the cashier themselves, but one fellow handed me the money to pay for him. When I brought back the change he picked out a nickel and offered it to me. I really did n't understand what he was up to, so I asked briskly : " What 's that for ?" 92 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "For you, of course," was the expansive reply. Then the full horror of the situation dawned upon me. He was trying to tip me. "Thanks awfully," I protested, in a panic at the thought of touching that five cents' worth of pollution, " but you really must n't, you know. I 'm just as much obliged to you and all that, but it 's against the rules, you know." The man evidently thought that this was some new kind of sarcasm, called forth by dissatisfaction with the size of the tip. His grin shortened to a snarl and his under lip shot out. "You damn sparrow," he roared, "what d 'yer mean by gettin* gay and insultin' me with that kind of fresh talk? Not enough, hey! I '11 give you enough. I '11 learn you," and he reached out for me. I was n't there, but my fist was, and it sent him sprawling, chair and all. Evidently he was a valued patron, for the proprietor hurried to help him to his feet. In the rush of customers for a look at the fight, the cashier, who had left her desk, whispered in my ear: "Back to Broadway for yours, Ferdinand, and hump yourself. His nibs is a fly cop and he '11 pinch you sure. Take the back door and do a disappearin* stunt up the alley." I was still red-hot, but on the whole it seemed JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 93 to be sound advice, so I humped myself, shedding my apron and putting on my coat as I passed out. Cautiously, and by devious ways, I worked back toward Jim's office, scared one minute half to death at the narrow escape I 'd had from a free ride and some unpleasant notoriety, and exulting the next at the thought that I had so promptly avenged the insult of that proffered tip. Jim was in his office by this time, but the thoughtless pup had already had his luncheon. "Hello! Sporty Boy," he called as soon as he saw me. "What now ? Ain't the Governor doing the doting parent yet ? Does he need another swift kick into the path of love and duty ?" Jim and I had always been mighty good friends ever since one night when, as freshmen, we had tried to coax an Angora cat out of a farmer's yard, only to discover that pussy was a skunk. Of course, we had had to see a good deal of each other in the days following, and the friendship thus begun had continued down to that final episode when, as seniors, we had gone in sportive mood to our tailor's, and had ordered some "pants made princess and lined with black satin." He had made them, too, and had threatened to sue us when we balked at paying. I 'd touched Jim a thousand and one times in 94 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL the past, the one time being the day that he'd had it to lend, and he had n't entirely ignored me in periods of financial stress. But now, though I 'd come to his office with the idea of separating him from a hundred so quickly that the operation would be absolutely painless, and then of telling him my pathetic story, I found myself holding back and even swelling up into my old self. I sup pose the breakfast had heartened me, but for some reason, now that I actually needed money, I shrank from borrowing; and now that I had real troubles to tell, I felt an instinctive desire to keep them to myself. So I only answered: "Whatever psychological impulses the Governor may have received from you, Jim, there was n't one to kiss and make up among them; so I 'm now reduced to the horrid, if temporary, necessity of going to work. " "You work!" Jim exclaimed. "That's bad. Better try to stick it out. For what can you do, Sporty Boy ? " "Not a blamed thing." "I thought so; well, we'll have to follow the old prescription, and make an editor of you," and Jim knitted his brows thoughtfully. Then, bringing his fist down on the table: "By jings! the very thing! Here let me feel your bumps," and he made an imaginary pass over my head. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 95 "Just as I supposed gall curiosity im agination invention minding other people's business all highly developed. Reverence respect accuracy practically aborted. This is fine ! This is grand ! Why, man alive, you 're a natural-born reporter. You '11 make a wonder a peach ! Come along with me and I '11 fix you up in ten minutes." I felt a little dubious. "Do you really think I could do it, Jim?" I asked. "Now, joshing aside, those fellows who write for the papers are no end sharp and clever." "Do I really think you could do it?" exploded Jim. " Do I really think a hog can root ? Why, Spur, I pledge you my word that you can't help doing it you were born to do it. It would be a crime not to do it strangling an infant Horace Greeley in the cradle. Come along, and drop this sweet-young-thing business. Be yourself; be brassy, and Sam '11 snap at the chance to get you. He knows the hot stuff when he sees it. " On the way Jim unbosomed himself. One of his friends was the city editor of a yellow news paper, and it was on him that he proposed to unload me, after enjoining him to keep my rela tion to Con Spurlock quiet. This was simple enough, as I really knew very few people in New York, having gone direct to Harvard from Akron, 96 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL and having been away, of course, through the summer vacations. Jim's friend was a good fellow, with nice instincts when his profession of yellow journalism per mitted, but he did n't seem to share Jim's enthu siasm. Instead, he put forth some extremely dis couraging remarks about things being slow, and having to turn away old men. It really seemed a shame to bother him, and I began to apologise for it. But Jim was n't to be put off so lightly. In fact, the only way to put Jim off was to put him out. "Oh, I know all that, Sam," he returned, waving it aside airily. " But there 's always room for a star man on any staff, and you 've got to have Spur, really. Your sort through and through yellow as a pup. He's got it in him," and he tapped his forehead significantly. I tried to back Jim up by looking intelligent, but Sam's cold, leaden gaze, as he politely, but firmly, explained that he did n't have to have me, and that he simply would n't have me, reduced me to stammering imbecility. "Of course," he wound up carelessly, "if Mr. Spurlock cares to drop into Mrs. Hamilton's ball to-night, and picks up anything that will make a good story, we can use that. We 're covering it through the basement, but something good which the servants JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 97 don't really get is always likely to break loose at one of her shows, especially when Tom Burnett's around." "Fine! Fine!" Jim exclaimed. "There 's your chance, Spur. You can break in with a bang on this. And, Sam, tip the night editor off to let his story run. He '11 get a good one; don't you fret," and before I knew it Jim had me out of the office. "But, Jim," I protested, as soon as we gained the street, "I don't know Mrs. Hamilton, and I have n't an invitation to her ball." "But you have a dress suit haven't you? And, if you had an invitation, you would n't feel that you could do this honourably, would you ? As it is, you can cut in with a clear con science. There '11 be a crowd, and some people that you know are sure to be there. They '11 think that you were invited, and, if you mix it up with them, every one else will. Even if it does come to the worst, you can always think of a way to side-step gracefully. Why, it 's like pinching pennies from the blind man's cup on the corner, it 's so safe." "And about as decent," I replied. All the same I went, and I went hungry, too, for Jim had to hurry off, and in my excitement over the idea of trying the thing on, I clean forgot 98 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL to touch him until it was too late. It was easy, too. Crime always was for me. I had n't more than come down stairs slinking as criminals should, but never do and tactfully avoided my hostess, before I met some fellows I knew and was introduced by them to some awfully jolly people. I 'd have had a bully time if I had n't been so hungry, and could have made myself believe that I was n't a mean, low-down, yellow dog for being there. Tom Burnett, the society cut-up, and a lot of other people about whom I 'd been reading all my life, came out between the "turns" of the hired vaudeville "artists" and did some screamingly funny stants and sprang some bully gags on their friends. But nothing broke loose, as Sam called it, and I began to ask myself what could break loose, in a party of friends, which the public would have a right to know about ? The longer I stayed, the lower I got in my mind, and the more ashamed I was of being there; but between the gnawings of hunger and those of conscience, hunger won in a walk and I decided to stay on for supper. So when the vaudeville was over, I wandered back to the ball-room, where I would be nearer the food belt, and there, sitting in a corner with Brooke Churchill, was Anita. Brooke looked sulky and Anita bored, at which JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 99 I felt a glow of pleasure. My first instinct was to side-step behind a clump of palms, as I did n't care to have Anita see me; for she happened to know that I was n't on Mrs. Hamilton's list of acquaintances. But even as I sought, modestly and discreetly, to efface myself, she caught sight of me, and smiled and bowed. I nodded distantly, started to turn away and walked right up to her. It was a very curious psychological phenomenon, and one that I have often noticed in moments of great temptation. My mind will be simply adamant to resist, and then my legs will absolutely refuse to obey the sharp, stern order of my brain to take me out of danger. So I said, "Good evening," tried to bow myself away with some conventional phrase, and found, to my dismay, that my rebellious tongue was boldly assuring Anita that it was our waltz. Instead of dissenting, she smiled up radiantly, and lent herself to the little fraud with a "So it is; how stupid of me to forget." "None but the brave deserve the fair," I thought, as Anita surrendered herself to my guiding arm: "And none but the rich get them," I added, as I caught Brooke Churchill's jealous glare over her shoulder. I had hardly come to this conclusion before Anita whispered: "Where in the world have ioo JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL you been all evening, Jack ? I Ve been looking for you everywhere," which struck me as a rather surprising statement; for she must have known that Mrs. Hamilton's was the place of all others in New York where she was the least likely to find me. But, not to be outdone in polite mendacity, I answered: "Searching the house, from cellar to garret, in a vain attempt to find you." "I 've so much to tell you," she returned, and then, rather inconsistently, fell silent. I did not venture anything in reply, for who but a fool would want to talk while he was gliding into heaven on a Strauss waltz, holding Anita in his arms. It might have been an hour later, though I suppose it was only five minutes, when I woke up to find that the music had left us stranded near the door of the palm-room. I started to take Anita back to Brooke Churchill, afraid that if I tried to say "good-night," except in his restraining presence, I might beg her to elope with me instead. But when I had screwed myself up to this agonising pitch of renunciation, I felt that every reasonable claim of conscience had been satisfied, and carefully guided her away from Brooke Churchill. We had just gained the door of the palm-room and were preparing to plunge into its deserted shadows for almost every one was in the supper- room now when I felt a light touch on my JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 101 shoulder and heard a rather husky voice say: "S'cuse me; one moment,'* and turning, I found myself face to face with the fly cop who, that very morning, had tried to tip me in Black Bourke's restaurant. If I had just lived an hour in heaven with Anita, I paid for it now with a week in hell, as I read recognition in that fellow's eyes. I saw myself exposed, disgraced, kicked out, perhaps arrested, and played up as the hero of that yellow story for which I had sneaked in uninvited. And in that silent second the immortal truth was burned into my brain that the time to repent is before it happens. How much of this showed in my face I don't know, for in almost the same second the thought that Anita must n't be mixed up in the mess came to brace me and help clear my face of any emotion except mild surprise. And when I answered, " Certainly, in a moment," my voice was fairly even. I took Anita to the nearest chair, where I left her with a hasty word of excuse, while I drew the detective aside. "Now, sir," I began, with as much assurance as I could muster, "what can I do for you?" "You can come along with me to headquarters without making any disturbance," was the ready and not altogether unexpected answer. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL I saw that I was plainly It, and them and those, too, not to mention the dog, but I tried to bluff. "What in the devil are you talking about? I 'm one of Mrs. Hamilton's guests, and so I can't resent this sort of thing here, but I warn you that you are making serious trouble for your self by your blundering." "Never mind me, sonny; I 'm used to havin' trouble." Then, with a sudden change from the jocose to the fierce: "Forget it and come along with me see ?" o I saw that it was no use unless I appealed to my unconscious host through Anita, and I pre ferred a quiet exit as a thief to a public exposure as a cad. So I answered: "I suppose I '11 have to, unless I want to precipitate an unpleasant scene; but I warn you again that this will have serious consequences for you." "Cut it; cut it!" "All right; just let me explain to this young lady and say good " "What 's all this about, Jack ?" asked Anita at my elbow. She had overheard enough of the conversation to know that something out of the usual was happening. I answered with the courage that comes from the knowledge that one is backed up against a stone wall. "Nothing much, except that this JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 103 fellow has mixed me up with some of his East Side friends, and it seemed simplest to have it out at headquarters." "Oh!" laughed Anita with sudden compre hension. "You 're Mrs. Hamilton's detective, are n't you ?" "Yes, Miss Grey," the detective answered. "And this man is one of the slickest rnobs and sneak-thieves in New York." Anita laughed. "Whose heart has he been stealing now, Mr. Detective ?" The detective began to get a little angry. "You 've been conned, Miss Grey. I don't know how he managed to scrape acquaintance with you to-night, but he 's all to the bad. We 've been wanting him for two or three jobs; I almost nabbed him in Black Bourke's restaurant this mornin'. You can bet that when he 's searched we '11 find he 's made a dozen touches to-night. Have you missed anything ?" I 'd often seen Anita angry at me, but I 'd never seen her angry for me. One glimpse of her flushed cheeks and flashing eyes was enough to repay me for the whole unpleasant experience until I remembered that when she knew the real truth she 'd feel nothing but contempt for me. "Nonsense," she protested; "you 've simply made a stupid blunder. This gentleman is Mr. io 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Spurlock, Jonas Spurlock's son, and a very old friend of mine." "You 're sure, miss, that you're " " I 'm sure that you 're a fool," Anita inter rupted viciously. " But I 'm sure of my man," the detective returned obstinately. "And he was going along to headquarters before you backed him up. Would he have done that if he was on the level ?" "To prevent your annoying this young lady, as you are now," I protested. "You dear Jack," Anita cried. "Were you going to jail to keep me out of the muss ? Of course you were." Then to the detective: "Come; we 've had quite enough of this. If you can't take my word for Mr. Spurlock's identity, go to Mr. Hamilton and ask him." I sincerely hoped that he would n't and he did n't . Very much against his will he decided that he was mistaken, grumbled a word of apology and was off, while Anita, with the indifference to supper that is bred of dinner at eight, and an unconscious ness that there can be anyone in the world who has n't had dinner at eight, preceded me into a pleasantly sequestered corner of the deserted ball-room and settled down beside me, repeating between little bursts of laughter, "The cleverest sneak-thief in New York ! Oh, Jack ! " JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 105 I was feeling too low in my mind to care for my share of the fun, so after making one or two feeble rejoinders, I asked, in order to change the subject: "What was it that you wanted to tell me, Anita ?" "That I Ve broken my engagement with Brooke Churchill," she answered. "Not because I like him less, but because you Ve been neglecting me shamefully for a fortnight, and you Ve really become a habit with me, Jack." I could n't think of anything to say, though I knew that I must say something quick. " Ye-es," I stammered, in a foolish, meaningless way, and without daring to look at her. "Why don't you propose to me, Jack?" she asked teasingly. Only one answer and no explanations go with that question. As I could n't give it, I tried to side-step with an imbecile joke. "Oh, Anita!" I said; "this is so sudden!" "Jack," she began and there was something in her voice that compelled me to look at her "I " Her eyes met mine. Just how much she read in them, I don't know, but she was too much of a woman not to understand; too much of a thoroughbred to show that she did. " must say good-night now," she continued. "Brooke was so tiresome that he gave me a 106 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL headache, and you 're not bright enough at parlour games to cure it;" and before I could find my tongue she was gone. The break between her words had been almost imperceptible, but in that moment I had lost Anita. I 'd have been a dog had I asked her to marry me, knowing how awkward she 'd have found the situation when she learned the truth about me, for of course Anita could n't marry a man with out money or expectations. But it hardly seemed a proper reward for the only decent thing I 'd done that evening, and the only hard thing I 'd ever done, that I should go home feeling like a whipped cur. "That 's what comes of amateurs working at being good," I reflected as I left the house, and walked back to the St. Regis. On the table in my room there were two delayed letters, readdressed from the house by the faithful, but careless, butler. The first was a little note from Anita that read: "Dear Jack: I want to see you Wednesday night, so I 've asked Helen to send you a card to her show. Don't fail me. Anita." The second was an invitation to Mrs. Helen Hamilton's ball. CHAPTER VI IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL MEETS A BENEVOLENT OLD GENTLEMAN CAME to next morning with a shudder. When it 's the day that a fellow 's going to be married, or to bury a wealthy uncle who 's made his will right, I suppose that he can wake up glad of it; but I 've never been one to greet the rising sun with song. If ever I become head of a family, I 'm afraid I '11 start the day by kicking Fido, spanking the twins, and saying impulsive things to Mrs. Spurlock. For when I come out of a long dreamless, it 's not to re member that I 'm to be Queen of the May, but that I 'm It. For some people life is one long day before; for me it 's one long morning after. Standing up, a man's in position to fight, so his sins are careful how they come around finding him out; but lying down, he 's defenceless. My troubles came at me from all sides, and soaked it to me till my conscience fairly ached. Proved yourself a bounder lost Anita fell down on your assignment queered yourself with Sam and Jim spoiled your last chance to get a 107 loS JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL job wasted your Aunt Julia's legacy, and it was more than you can make in a thousand years missed your supper going to be turned out on the street to-day starving homeless friendless penniless worthless have n't over looked a single one of the known ways of making a fool of yourself, have you ? Thought up new ones, even! Regular Thomas A. Edison of dam- phoolishness, ain't you ? I dodged, the question and turned over with a groan, only to find myself face to face with the ghosts of those fat days at college when we lived high and stood low; when we perfected ourselves in all the different ways of spending money, without learning a single way of earning it. I even yearned over my lost Chicago job, as I thought of the luxury and pomp in which I could live now on twenty dollars a week. Could I ever again fool anyone into giving me that princely sum for my services ? Not unless I found a feeble-minded employer of the feeble-minded, and every one I 'd struck so far had had at least sense enough not to want me. What was it other men had, that I lacked, which enabled them to get jobs ? What was it they could do, that I could n't, for which they were paid real money ? How did they manage to start out empty-handed and then JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 109 come back to their boyhood homes, leading caravans laden with rich stuffs and the coin in dray-loads ? I felt a sickening certainty that I could never do it; that if ever I came back, I 'd be driving the dray. I saw myself first-assistant on an ash-cart, removing garbage, digging sewers, selling papers, doddering about the almshouse, being buried in the Potter's Field and then going to hell. I squirmed over to tne other side, away from this awful thought, and then went on to drama tise it. Alone in New York! Not a friend in that great city! Not a penny in his pocket! Midnight on Brooklyn Bridge! Alas! Alas! and he so young and full of promise! Strew the roses and group the set-pieces tastily around the mound. At this climax of misery I gulped, swallowed my Adam's apple it was the only breakfast fruit in sight jumped out of bed, and made for the bathroom. A shave and a dip cheered me mightily. By the time I was dressed and had packed my linen and my evening clothes in a suit-case, I had a plan of campaign mapped out. First, I must escape from the hotel. Sounds simple, so long as I did n't owe a dollar, but Napoleon's passage of the bridge of Lodi, or Teddy's assault on San Juan Hill, looked like buying fame at bargain no JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL rates beside walking out of a New York hotel without tipping a soul. I fixed it firmly in my mind that if I once let my suit-case get out of my hands I was lost, and bolted for it. I fought my way down to the office, through hall-boys, elevator-boys, and bell boys who, at every step, leapt like tigers for my bag, some trying to wrest it from me by force, some to coax it away by guile, ail solicitous lest I strain myself by so extraordinary an exertion, and reached the goal, flushed and uncomfortable, but victorious. There I gave up my room, explaining that I 'd suddenly been called West, guarding my bag the while from attack by two boys who hovered on my flank. I arranged to have my trunk stored until called for, hoping that the porter would n't exert his full strength when he came to lift it, as it might flip up and hit him; for it was empty. This was purely a mental hope, though, and I did n't wait to verify it, but ran the gauntlet to the exit, brushed by the doorman without answering his solicitous "Cab, sir ?" and found myself on the Avenue, disgraced, yet safe. I 've heard that New York hotels keep a servant for every guest they can accommodate. They must have kept fifty for me. It was a solemn moment, but I was so delighted that the ordeal of getting out of the hotel was JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL in over that I felt nothing but elation. Tipping is undoubtedly a grave evil when one doesn't tip. Something should be done to stop it, and the man who leads the way in this great reform will deserve a monument and need, one, too for he '11 starve to death. How vicious, how un-American some things seem when one can't afford to do them! Treading the familiar primrose path to my little hock-shop on Sixth Avenue so much of my stuff was hung up there that I really began to feel a proprietary interest in it I commenced to plan breakfast, for at last I was going to eat again. Fatal mistake to think of pleasure before business was concluded ! The Hebrew, seeing my eagerness and divining my appetite, viewed my evening clothes with indifference, my dinner- suit with scorn, and my gold studs with contempt. Twenty-five dollars for the lot, and a bad lot it was. He looked at me significantly, not at the collateral. I took it, feeling mortified that I owned such pitiful rags, ashamed that I must descend to taking money which was advanced out of sheer goodness of heart, and put for the nearest restaurant. While the steak was cooking, I had two grape fruit, two orders of eggs, two pots of coffee and a little breakfast bacon. I wound up with waffles JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL and maple syrup, gave the waiter a quarter, stuck a perfecto under my nose, and started out, sassy and snappy, to find a boarding-house. All boarding-houses looked alike to me, for I 'd never been in a New York one. A man told me once that they were like whiskey, only different, because, while they were all bad, some were worse than others. So I tackled the first house where I saw the sign " Rooms With Board " displayed, and asked the slovenly female who answered the bell for the landlady, wondering the while what I should say when I was asked for references. The female looked me over, and answered: "I 'm her. Step right in; I just happen to have a lovely room empty." She relieved me of my bag with a firmness which brooked no opposition, and led the way upstairs to a hall bedroom. Before I saw it, I knew that I had taken it, and no back talk. " I *m not quite sure how long my business will keep me in the city," I explained in a rather apolegetic tone, as I paid twenty dollars in advance for two weeks, "so I shan't send for my trunk just yet." "Oh! that's all right," my landlady returned expansively, "so long as you pay in advance. The last gent that had this room brought a paper collar and a copy of the Clipper, and got along JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 113 quite comfortable for a week. Called one his baggage and the other his library. Quite a josher, Mr. Wilkens was, but always the gentle man." Then, after telling me the hours for meals, she left me to settle myself in my new quarters. Well, I was almost broke again, but I was sure of a place to eat and sleep for two weeks at least, and that seemed pretty good to a fellow who 'd never looked further ahead than the next day. The goodness, though, was more in the idea than in the fact. In novels, there 's always an atmosphere of decayed gentility about the boarding-house in which the poor hero lives. Well, this one had the decayed atmosphere, but there was nothing genteel about it, and never had been. As I looked around my little room, with its dirty carpet and its cheap oak bed and washstand, I decided that any man who started life in such a room was a hero, all right, and that it was up to Carnegie to find him out and pin the largest medal in his collection on his breast. Dinner was my first meal at the boarding- house, for I spent the day down town in a fruit less search for work. It was slightly past the hour when I reached my room, so, after a hasty freshening up, I sniffed the nutritious atmosphere u 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL in the hall, and, catching a fresh scent of corned- beef and cabbage, followed the trail down to a basement dining-room. A yell of laughter greeted my entrance, and I hesitated in the doorway, angry and disconcerted, until I saw that no one was paying the slightest attention to me. The merriment had not been called forth by anything amusing in my appearance, as my vanity had feared, but by a story which a man sitting at the head of the table was just finishing. The only vacant chair in the room was beside him, and, rather awkwardly, for I felt that my fellow- boarders were taking my measure now, I made my way to it. Between sips of thin soup and bites of soggy bread, I returned their stares. There were half a dozen young women at the table, some pretty and pert, some pretty and peevish, one homely and good-hearted, no doubt all rather tired looking. One of the men had long hair and wore a flowing silk tie, another had pink cheeks and a lisp, while a third had a bald head and a plumber's moustache, through which he carefully strained his soup before it went gurgling merrily down his throat. But, most of all, my neighbour, the story teller, interested me. As I sat down he greeted me in a slight, but unmistakable Southern accent, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 115 with a polite "Good evenin', suh," and I noticed that he wore a frock coat. "A minister," I thought. "They're all great story-tellers. Looks as if I were going to be under religious influences." The next moment I modified that opinion, for I overheard my pretty neighbour on the other side saying: "Well, he fined me a day's pay for that, and when I asked him what was the use of bein' a show girl if he would n't give a fellow a show, he said he 'd show me if he heard another word out of my yap. Then he put me in the back row, and me the best dancer in the bunch. And it was all Jen's jealousy! The idea of that human lard-pail thinkin' she can dance. Ain't she the pudge, though ?" That made me decide that the influences might be worldly, after all; but I was prepared to take them any way they came, just so I had n't struck one of those joints where "we 're all just one large family, you know." I had n't had much experience, but I'd had enough to know that when anyone sprang the "just one large family" gag she was going to renig on the grub, or be impertinently curious about my affairs, or insist on my joining young John D.'s Bible-class, or give me the worst of it someway. Ever since I was rusticated in my freshman year, and the Widow Jenkins ii6 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL made me welcome as a member of the family, and said she 'd be a mother to me, and tried to be, and it cost the Governor a thousand to settle Ysobel Jenkins's breach-of-promise suit, I have preferred to remain a cold and distant stranger. At this point my diagnosis of the atmosphere's ailment was verified by the appearance of a New England boiled dinner, but it tasted better than the symptoms. Nothing short of dog would have discouraged my appetite. As we ate, I had an opportunity to scrutinise my neighbour more carefully. "Looks like Henry Ward Beecher," I decided at the first glance. "With a dash of H. H. Rogers and Hop. Smith," I added at the second. One moment the lines around his eyes were those of a good-humoured, easy-going man, who 'd laughed his way through life, and every word that dropped from his lips was a lump of sugar. The next, as he warmed up to his subject, his face furrowed with the lines a man gets from trouble and danger, and from facing both, and then the boom of battle sounded in his voice. "Don't tell me, suh," he was saying to the man with the plumber's moustache. "Life's not even a gamble in this age of commercialism, fo* Fo'tune deals from a brace box. She 's no longer blind, but cross-eyed, and she hoodoos every JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 117 square man that sits in her game. What show have honesty and frugality, suh ? What chance have you and I in business against the Spurlocks and the Harrimans ? None, suh ! I repeat it none. No mo' than a Sunday-school teacher at the Brighton track. Not so much, suh; fo' even the veriest tyro at that noble spo't may occasionally pick a winnah. But, not content with nullifyin' the laws of business, the hell-houn's of the System have suspended the operation of the beneficent laws of chance." It was n't the language of the cloth. "Just how have they managed to do that, sir ?" I ventured respectfully. " How, suh ? How, suh ?" and the Southerner transferred his attention to me. "Let me illus trate. One mo'nin', twenty years ago, suh, I was standin' in Hi Bufort's bucket-shop in Memphis, when my friend, Col'nel Sampson, walked in. The Col'nel had a regrettable habit of imbibin' quite freely in the evenin' and then of beginnin* again next mo'nin', befo' his better nature had had an oppo'tunity to assert itself. So he never really caught up with himself. Well, suh, he was feelin' pretty tol'ably comf'table this mo'nin'; in fact, while he could navigate successfully, fo' he never lost control of his mem bers, he could only just stuttah, and he saw n8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL double. Remarkable illustration of the compen sations of Natchah, suh, that when a man loses the power of speech, he can see twice as much. Well, suh, the Cornel walked up to the boa'd; tried to make out the quotations; could n't; spread his legs apart; took deliberate aim, and expectorated at the list of stocks. A very ungen'- manly trick, suh, I grant you; but perhaps a justifiable stratagem under the circumstances. Then he pointed to the spot on the boa'd he had hit the L. & N. quotation, if I remember rightly and called out : ' Here you, Hi, buy me thousan' shash of thash,' and, by Geo'ge, suh, that stock never did stop going up. Made his everlastin' fo'tune fo' him. Now, suh, could that happen under the present system ?" "Why," I admitted, "I don't just exactly see the connection." " Don't see the connection, suh ? It 's per fectly plain. In those days speculation was a gentleman's game, with a fair spo'tin' element in it. Now, suh, it 's played with loaded dice, by a lot of sho't card men, who 'd rob an intoxi cated gentleman without the slightest compunc tion. Do I make myself clear, suh ?" I was rather dazed by the Southerner's logic, but he carried it off with such fire and conviction that I could only murmur an assent I hate JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 119 fool arguments anyway and ask him if there were no remedy for this parlous state of affairs. "Our honoured President will find a way, suh," he returned with decision. "A great and good man, though not of my political faith. I have a most profound admiration for him, despite the unfo'tunate and ill-advised Booker T. Wash ington incident. He has my confidence, suh." We had finished our dinner, and were leaving the dining-room, when my neighbour turned back to me and said cordially: "I should be glad to continue our conversation, if you will honah me with yo' company in my apartment, Mr. ," and he paused for me to supply the name. "Spurlock, sir Jack Spurlock," I answered. "I shall be delighted to accept your invitation." "A name not unconnected with our topic," was his comment. " If you mean money, it 's quite unconnected with it in my person," I replied lightly. "A lack we have in common, suh," he answered with a slight bow. " My name is Jackson Majah Geo'ge MagofHn Jackson, suh, of Bowlin' Green, Kentucky." "A soldier, Major?" "Of the late unpleasantness, suh; but now of Fo 'tune, or perhaps mo' accurately, of Misfo'tune." 120 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Brothers in arms," I laughed, and that was how my friendship with the Major began. He had a bully, big room, though it was shab bily furnished, and a trunk, which seemed very grand and opulent to me. He planted me in the easiest chair, gave me a real cigar, and brought out a bottle of Bourbon. "Say when, suh," he requested as he began to pour. "I '11 take mine with water, if you please," I interrupted. The Major set down the bottle and hunted up a tumbler. "A degenerate age," he commented sadly. "An era of dilution watered honah; watered stocks; watered whiskey. I beg yo' pa'don, suh; I meant nothin' personal." "Don't mind me, Major," I replied cheerfully. "I guess you 've called it," and I lifted my glass. The Major raised his, inclined it toward me and tossed off his drink with, "Yo' health, suh." There was no concession to the spirit of the age on his part, either before or after the operation. He took his straight. I set mine down untasted. For, as I smelt the whiskey I decided that I did n't want it, and that it was plain foolishness at this stage of the game to take on a habit which most employers did n't seem to like. Then, too, for several daj*s JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 121 I 'd been wondering vaguely whether there might n't be some rewards handed out nearer than heaven for this be-good business. An old hand at virtue would have reformed either before or after accepting the drink, but my good resolutions are nothing if not de trop. The Major, seeing that I was slighting his liquor, promptly resented the implied reflection on its quality. "Have no fears, suh," he explained a little stiffly. " It 's from home, and the best that the old State can do." " It is n't that," I answered, rather shame facedly; "but I 'm up against it now, and I don't believe that it 's good business to drink under the circumstances. In fact, I think I '11 cut it out for keeps." "A wise decision," the Major returned. "I admire, I honah you fo* it," and he dismissed the subject with a flourish. I yearned to explain further, for I could see plainly that he thought I had a weakness for rum. But I refrained, realis ing the hopelessness of making a man of the Major's training understand that there could be any reason, except a depraved appetite, for ab staining from a beverage which he regarded as one of the choicest blessings of Providence. So we passed on to other subjects, and, under his 122 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL sympathetic questioning, I told him, with judi cious reservations, enough of my story to lead him to believe that I was a young man of good family, who, owing to his father's death had had to leave college and hunt for work. "A terrible indictment of modern conditions!" he exclaimed, when I had finished. "A hellish system, suh, under which a gentleman of birth and breeding a young man of intelligence and parts, if you will permit me to say it to yo' face, suh, cannot find honourable employment! Per haps, though at the moment my own circum stances are none too prosperous, I may be able to suggest somethin'. If nothing better offers," he added musingly, "there is always Lah Grip- pah." "Lahwhat?" I asked. "Lah Grippah," he repeated. "My simple remedy fo* simpletons. The name, of cou'se, is an adaptation from the French fo* influenza. I have found it a useful crutch in periods of adversity." I couldn't believe my ears. "A medicine that you sell ?" I questioned. "Exactly, my deah boy, when all other means of makin* an honest livelihood fail me temporarily. Not that makin' money's hard; any child can do that, but keepin* it 's a grown man's game." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 123 "But selling this Lah Grippah isn't your regular business ?" I persisted, a little rudely. "No, suh," the Major replied. "In my time I *ve played many parts and many games." "I suppose, Major," I ventured, bent on finding out what the old fellow really did do for a living, "that the late unpleasantness, which had so much to do with changing conditions in the South, cost you your property ?" "On the contrary, suh, it did n't cost me a dollar. In fact, though at times I have found myself possessed of considerable sums of ready money, I have never been a man of prope'ty in the strict sense of the word. I abandoned my profession, the law a jealous mistress, suh, and I was fickle befo' the wah, as I did not find its practice so lucrative as I had hoped. Fo' some years thereafter I travelled, largely on the Mississippi River. It was the decline in steam- boatin', suh, the adoption of less leisurely methods of travel, that cut into my income and fo'ced me to come No'th and engage in trade. Befo' this blank era of distrust and commercialism one could always find gentlemen ready and anxious to play. But the System has spared nothin', suh. It has debased our national games, even. Sharpers sit around the poker table. Invention has busied itself with the faro box. A so'did 124 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL and cold-blooded generation yells for the police when asked to take a hand in a friendly little game." "Yes, I know," I nodded sympathetically. "But after the river played out and faro became an exact science, how did you make out then ?" " In various ways, suh some good, some bad, all honest. A man with his wits about him can always find enough people who 've lost their's to earn an honest dollar when he needs one. Just now my funds are toPably low, owin' to an unfortunate speculation in Bibles." "In Bibles!" I exclaimed, my curiosity aroused again, as I saw my chameleon changing back into a minister. "How's that?" "A most ill-advised undertaking suh, and a departure from principle fo' which I was prope'ly punished. I was just back from a lucrative tour with Lah Grippah, fo' the weather had been singularly propitious, so much so that when I would assemble an audience I could sca'cely make myself heard fo' the blowin' of noses. But, while I was in no immediate want, I have reached a time of life, suh, when a gentleman begins to develop an insatiable curiosity to know who is goin' to pay his boa'd bill next month. An evenin' at stud poker a noble game, suh, when played under proper auspices from JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 125 which, through a belated smile of fo'tune in the shape of fo' aces, I escaped sho't of complete disaster, hastened my decision. I have regretted since, suh, that I did not lose my money like a gentleman, instead of fritterin' it away tryin' to elevate a race which I am inclined to think deserves its misfo'tunes." "But if Lah Grippah is such a cinch," I inter rupted, "why don't you keep right along with that?" "Lah Grippah is, as you observe, tol'ably certain," the Major returned with an access of dignity, " but the er publicity attendant on dis- pensin' it to the er afflicted is most unpleasant to me. In huntin' fo' somethin' mo' in keepin' with my tastes, somethin' of a speculative natchah, which affo'ded a wider margin fo' profit or loss, I called on a publisher with whom I had once done a stroke of business, introducin' to our people that wonde'ful volume, the Martahs of the Confederacy, a complete history of the Lost Cause and its heroes, stimulatin', educational and patriotic, yet as entertainin' as a novel. "I digress, suh, but I can never think of that admirable volume without my enthusiasm run- nin* away with me. I may have mentioned to you, suh, that I had the honah of servin* under the gallant and universally-beloved Buckner durin' the late wah. A great general, a peerless leader, suh! ia6 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Well, in pokin' around among the publisher's stock I came across the unbound sheets of a tremenjous big book, bigger than an unabridged Webstah. That looked promising fo' it has been my experience that our people want to buy their prose by the pound and their po'try by the wrapper. "'What's that, suh ?' I asked of the pub lisher, pointing at the pile with my stick. "'Bibles, Majah,' he answered. 'Family Bibles, and I wish I could find the families. They 'd hardly interest you, though. Quiet readin'. Not up to date and snappy enough fo' yo' trade.' "But they do interest me, suh,' I replied 'There ought to be right smart of a trade fo' a book as big as that.' "Nothin' doin', Majah,' was his discouragin' comment. 'We 're stung on 'em. Used to be so that every jay in the country had to have one in the best room along with the wax pond-lilies and the crayon of grandpop, the human billygoat. Now they 're plum out of style. No demand except fo' po'table sizes a la Oxford. Had 'em ten years, and could n't sell 'em to a Chink in an infant class.' "It was the word 'Chink' that did it. "'But, by Geo'ge, suh, I can sell them,' I said, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 127 bangin* my stick down with one of those sudden inspirations that I have so often found a sou'ce of profit in the past. 'If you '11 illustrate them fo' me I '11 take the whole blank lot.' "Well, suh, in ten minutes I was the possessor of a thousand Bibles, big enough to fill a box- cah, which I proposed to make a powe'ful means fo' good in my home State, and incidentally to one of its deservin' sons. The publisher agreed to bind them in plush fo' me and to illustrate them profusely with coloured angels." "Was there anything very novel about that?" I interrupted. "It seems to me I 've seen Bibles with coloured illustrations somewhere." "Not with my kind of coloured illustrations, suh," the Major returned, smiling indulgently. "My angels were to be blue-black, and saddle- coloured, and gingah-coloured any shade but white. In sho 't, suh, they were to be coons, and, as you may have observed, the Afro-Ameri can carries his instability and fickleness of char acter even into the matter of his colour. I aimed to fetch all shades. That was the nubbin of my idea, suh." "Coons! You mean that the illustrations were to be of Negro angels ?" I asked, not quite grasping the idea as yet. "Exactly, suh. Well, to proceed: I placed i 2 8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL myself in communication with a friend in Ken tucky, and learned that there was sho'tly to be a big nigger camp-meetin* at Hominy Run; so I shipped my Bibles there and followed them in person. You begin to sense the idea, suh ? You begin to apprehend a certain blank novelty in the conception ?" I admitted that I was beginning both to sense the idea and to apprehend a certain blank novelty. "You ought to have added a rag-time hymn- book to your line," I suggested. "Not a bad idea, suh," the Major replied, paus ing as if to make a mental note of it before he continued. "Well, there must have been five thousand singin', shoutin', watermelon-eatin' niggers at that camp-meetin', and there seemed to be a good deal of money circulatin'. It sho'ly did look promising though I confess that I did not relish the thought of descendin' to doin' business with niggers, even though it was largely of a missionary character. I have no prejudice against the African, suh, in his proper place as a servant; but I have always felt that a grave mistake was made in admittin' him to the ballot and the privileges of a citizenship fo' which he is totally unfitted by natchah. Fo'tunately, the thought of our best people has found a way to stop in- JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 129 judicious and indiscriminate votin*. I need not remind a gentleman of yo* education that the Anglo-Saxon race will never brook Negro domi nation. "The familia'ty and insolence with which I was treated while I was making my arrangements to set up on the grounds fairly made my blood boil, but I remembered that my mission was of a semi-religious natchah, and so managed to appear ca'm throughout that tryin' ordeal. "When my stand was ready and my Bibles stacked up, I had no difficulty in attractin' a crowd; in fact, some nigger passed the word around that I was a white bishop, who had come to preach to them, and I blush to confess that I humoured them in the delusion. I painted an eloquent and movin' picture of the wrongs that the African had suffered in ancient times as a subject race, drawin* freely on the Old Testa ment fo' illustration, and the Amens began poppin' all over the crowd. As I warmed up, I reckon I hollered a little, fo* the first thing I knew I had an old Auntie wavin' toward me through the crowd, shoutin' 'Glory; I 'se got it! 'I was strongly tempted to stop right there and make a first sale, but I decided that I 'd better get them comin* a little stronger. So I kept on to slavery times in our beloved Southland, intending I blush to 130 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL say, to slander that halcyon period of our country's history fo' the sake of a few paltry dollars. But, as I thought of the old days, I found myself drawin' a picture of the care-free lives that the slaves had led on the old plantation, with the banjos twangin* and the fried chicken and hog- meat passin' round, which moved me to tears, and was not, I think I may say, entirely wasted on the mo' intelligent members of my audience. I am afraid, though, that I made mo* mouths than eyes water, fo' I have been told that I have a singularly felicitous manner of describin' the delights of the table. Comin' to my climax, I showed them how, since the wah, they had been slighted in science and art and literature, and even in religion; how, in sho't, everything was now in the hands of double-faced Yankees, who, while pretendin' to love the Negro, were really his worst enemies, carryin' their secret animosity into the printin' of his Bible even. But this great wrong was now to be righted. I had come to this camp-meetin', representin' an association of benevolent Southern gentlemen, who, as a pure labour of love, and at great expense to them selves, had prepared an edition of the Bible in which the coloured race was, fo' the first time, treated fairly. These Bibles I would distribute among them at a purely nominal charge, barely JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 131 sufficient to cover cost of packin' and freight. The books themselves were really a free gift a splendid, a glorious, an upliftin' philanthropy. "Well, suh, that crowd fairly Amened and Hallelujahed itself hoa'se, and, seizin' the psy chological moment, I motioned to my assistants to pass around the Bibles. It looked as if I were goin' to reap a rich reward fo' my labours. The coons fairly fell over themselves reachin' fo' the books, but as soon as they looked at the pictures, their demeanah underwent an extrao'- dinary change. Instead of manifestin' the plea sure I had a right to expect, suh, as some slight return fo' my thoughtfulness, they simply passed the books back to my assistants and melted away. Almost befo' I knew it, I was alone with my two assistants, my thousand Bibles and one old darky, and he was startin' to hobble off. I was simply astounded astounded and insulted, suh, at receivin' such treatment from a parcel of blank niggers. But I had too much at stake to resent the outrage as it should have been resented, suh with my stick. So I called after the old darky: "'Hi, there, uncle; you come back here!' "The old fellow hobbled up to me reluctantly. "'What's the matter with those rascally nig gers ?' I questioned sharply, fo' my temper was a trifle on edge. 'What do they mean by i 3 2 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL runnin' away from these Bibles, after a lot of kind, charitable gentlemen have gone to all this trouble and expense fo' them ? Do they reckon I 've got nothin' to do t but stand around here shoutin' myself hoa'se to amuse a pack of black scalawags ?' '"I reckon dey didn't like de picters, boss/ the darky answered. "I sho'ly was irritated now. 'Didn't like the pictures ?' I shouted. 'What was the matter with those pictures, you black scoundrel ? You answer me that quick!' "'Well, boss,' he replied, with a conciliatory smile, 'it 's dish yere way. Dem picters ain't dezackly' accordin' to our understandin* ob de hereafter. Our pasture has done promised us niggers dat we '11 all be white in heben, and we jest natchelly won't buy no Jim-Crow Bibles.' "And, by Geo'ge, suh!" the Major concluded, swelling with rage at the remembrance of his wrongs, "the old fellow was right. I 'd have had to work my way back here with Lah Grip- pah, if I had n't finally managed to sell the Bibles, on the strength of their size and plush covers, fo' two-bits apiece, after tearin' out the pictures. I was richly punished, suh, but I deserved it, and the experience has confirmed me in my impression that any attempt at social or business JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 133 relations between the two races is most vicious and ill-advised. The African is not fitted, either by natchah or by trainin', to accept our civilisa tion, suh." It was almost midnight when the Major and I separated, with mutual expressions of pleasure in our new acquaintance. I went to my dingy little room and crept in between the damp sheets, grinning a little over the Major, but mightily cheered, all the same, at having made a first friend in my new world. For the Major's last words as we parted had been: "Give yo'self no concern about yo' finances, my deah boy. The Lo'd will provide." And then, as if to lend this pious assurance some substantial backing, he added: "And if He doesn't, I will, suh. The world is full of ideas, and ideas are money if you get hold of the right ideas. We 're a good pair, suh, and we '11 draw to our hand." CHAPTER VII IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL HAS A SURPRISING ADVENTURE AFTER what happened during the next few days I should have felt like going straight to the devil, if I had n't already gone and had n't been so busy trying to get back. Then, too, it takes money to make the trip properly, and having once travelled de luxe on the downward path, I did n't fancy a Coney Island excursion over the same route. My luck would have made a courageous gambler hang himself. I am not superstitious, but I know a hoodoo when I see one, and it does n't have to be cross-eyed and have thirteen burned in the skin at that. And I had a hoodoo that was twins. There J s a curious disease that some women have called cat-fear. When one who has it finds poor pussy straying about the house, she acts as if she 'd discovered a burglar under the bed. Well, mine is bear-fear. The first time a bear got me into trouble, I was willing to believe that it was an accident, but now I know that bears are worse luck for me than corns for Cinderella, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 135 with the courtly young salesman kneeling at her feet and saying, "Let me try on this number two, miss." It was almost nine o'clock when I got down to breakfast the morning after my first meeting with the Major, and I found that a tall and very slim young woman and the Major were the only occupants of the room. After they had given me good morning, the slim young woman with drew almost immediately, looking, because of the extraordinarily tight skirt that she wore, like a single leg stalking haughtily out of the room. The Major followed her with a compassionate glance. "A most unfo'tunate case, suh," he explained. "Too tall fo' the Merry, Merry Madcap Maids ballet; too narrow fo' the Happy, Healthy Hottentots Are We song. And when she asked fo' a place in the May-Day dance, the insultin' hound of a manager allowed that she could be the Maypole. It makes my blood boil, suh, to think of a refined and high-toned young lady like that bein' subjected to such das tardly insinuations. We must try to help her, Jack." "Is she hard up?" I questioned, grinning as I thought of the dollar-seventy that constituted my own cash assets. "Not fo' money, suh," the Major replied, 136 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL glaring reprovingly at me; "but fo' sympathy, fo' encouragement, fo' some one who won't laugh at her foolish little hopes and ambitions; fo' some one, suh, to whose eye the tear of er com passion is not a stranger; who will, in sho't, ap- precia' e the duties and er responsibilities of chivalrous manhood toward unprotected and er distressed womanhood," and the Major sputtered out his peroration in a fine spray. "Quite right, Major," I answered, dexterously dodging his flowers of speech. " I really was n't smiling at theyoung lady's troubles, but at my own." "A very proper attitude toward them, suh," the Major commented, relaxing into good humour again, and talking with less hydraulic pressure behind his words. "A gentleman should always laugh at his own troubles; but never at another's. Would it seem indelicate, suh, if I inquired into the condition of yo' finances ?" "Not indelicate of you to inquire, Major, but most indelicate of me to refer to anything that has fallen so low. I 'rn down to one-seventy and these mementos of my past," and I pro duced a bundle of pawntickets that would have choked a cow, though I have never heard of that rather mercenary animal being verbally choked on anything except a roll of greenbacks. The Major's good humour expanded into a T Q -Q rt to "o "c E < rt JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 137 broad grin. "By Geo'ge, suh," he commented, "you have not been idle." "On the contrary, Major," I answered, "I have been, and that 's why I have this collection of souvenir postals." The Major took the bundle and skinned it as if it were a hand at poker. "We must have this out, my deah boy," he said, pausing at a ticket marked, "One D. suit." "The rest can wait till Fo'tune deals us somethin' better than deuces; but evenin' clothes are capital in New York. In this town, Oppo'tunity does n't go to bed with the chickens. She 's as likely to knock at our do' after six as befo', and to request the plea sure of our company on Fifth Avenue as on Sixth. We must, like good soldiers, be ready fo' the call of duty, suh." " But, Major," I stammered, not quite knowing how to refuse an offer made in so kindly a spirit, particularly as I 'd never made a specialty of refusing things; "it's awfully bully of you to want to do this for me, but I 'm starting out right now to hunt for a job; so I hope I won't need to take advantage of your generosity." "A job, suh?" the Major questioned, swelling up into his majestic manner again "A job, 'suh ? And what kind of a job, might I venture to inquire ?" 138 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Any kind of a job/' I replied, feeling from something in my companion's tone that I was making a degrading and incriminating confession. "You amaze me, Jack," was his comment. "I respect, I honah, I admire yo* pluck, but I deprecate the suicidal resolution to which it has brought you. Why, suh, the first thing you know, you will find yo'self engaged in the lowest fo'ms of mercantile pursuits, pushin' a pen, poundin* a typewriter, hoppin' to do the biddin' of some jackanapes who has no higher ambition than note shavin', or buyin' and sellin' fo' a picayune, hucksterin' profit. I repeat it in all sincerity, Jack you amaze me." I began to feel a little amazed myself that I had even contemplated taking one of these pitiful jobs. " But what can a fellow do, Major ?" I in quired apologetically. "Everybody says that a man must start in at the bottom in business, and work up. How else can he learn ?" "Everybody lies, then," the Major thundered. "Look at me, suh! Did I ever start in at the bottom of anythin' ? Never, suh!" It occurred to me that he 'd never got to the top of anything, but I repelled the unworthy thought, and replied: "That may be, but I tried starting in at the JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 139 top, and I came down and through and out in China, much to the displeasure of the Chinks. I 'm afraid that my business head is a cabbage, and, after all, somebody has to be a clerk." "Yes, suh, somebody has to be, but let it be somebody else," the Major retorted. "Can't you see, my deah boy, that, if you have no head fo' business, under no circumstances should you consider engagin' in trade, especially in a menial capacity ? If you had capital, suh, yo' inaptitude fo' commerce would not be a matter of any par ticular impo'tance, fo' then you could employ others to attend to all the triflin' details fo' you, and content yo'self with takin' the profits. But it grieves me, Jack, to think of a young man of yo' ability and attainments throwin' away his God-given talents and becomin' the hirelin' of a Trust, slavin' fo' a pittance, without hope [and without ambition, and then bein' flung aside to starve when he is wo'n out and wo'thless." "Who said anything about slaving without hope or ambition ?" I demanded, feeling a mixture of pleasure and irritation in the Major's comments. "Who said it, suh?" the Major returned im pressively. "I said it, suh. I affirm it, I reiterate it, suh. It is part and pa'cel of our monst'ous system, suh, that is limitin' the oppo'tunities of our young men till there is no career open to i 4 o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL them except that of an underpaid servant of an overbearin' monopoly. And the scoundrels in con trol, not content with absorbin* all the currency in circulation and makin' a gentleman's note of hand absolutely unnego;iable unless it is backed up with bonds a piece of grim humour on their part, suh, fo* who would care to borrow if he owned bonds ? are stealthily and relentlessly inculcatin* ideals of pa'simony and ploddin' among our youth, breedin' a race of tin-ho'n spo'ts and pikers, suh, fo' whom one who had the pleasure of playin' with their fathers can feel nothin' but contempt. But the old days are gone, suh, when a gentleman left the so 'did details of his estate to his overseer; when courtesy was a creed and hospitality a religion, and a social evenin' at cards the relaxation of gentlemen. No'thern capital and Yankee methods have made the older generation, to which I have the honah of belonging suh, feel that they are blank Ish- maelites in their own country." I felt mighty sorry for the Major, but I was something of an Ishmaelite myself, so I repressed my tears, and gently led the conversation back to the point with: "Well, what do you advise, then ?" "That you shun offices like the plague; that you refuse to stultify yo' intellect by addin' two JACK SPURLOCK-- PRODIGAL 141 and two; that you be man enough not to soil yo* hands countin' the dirty money that another is wringin' from barter in the necessities of life; in sho't, that you abjure all these trifling trashy ways of keepin* body and soul together, and use the wits that the Lo'd has given you to live like an Anglo-Saxon and a gentleman. A fair idea is a livin'; a good one is a competence; and the Big Idea is a fo'tune. Fair ideas are plenty: I can get them any evenin' over a quiet glass; but together, suh, yo' wits and mine, we '11 find the Big Idea." I 'm afraid that I was n't born to row up stream when there 's a good current setting down. I adjourned to the Major's room with him and let him convince me there, though I 'd made up my mind down stairs to take a hand in his game. He explained that he wanted the companion ship and help of a bright young man, and that he 'd classified me as belonging to the pippin family as soon as he 'd seen me. He was awfully nice about the money end of things, and made me feel that I was doing him a favour in consent ing to have my evening clothes taken out of hock, my trunk out of storage, and in accepting the loan of twenty for carfare. These details settled, and the Major having wrung my hand and congratulated me on having been saved from myself, we went into i 4 2 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL executive session to see if we could n't dig up the Big Idea without further delay. But when I peered into my mind, I was simply appalled by the glimpse I got of the emptiness there, and, while the Major drew out a hundred or more ideas from his, they were all blanks. Evidently, it was Generals Beau- regard's and Early's day off, the Major observed; so we gave it up for the afternoon and went to a "Continuous." That evening we settled down to serious business in the Major's room. My host produced cob pipes and his bottle of Old Bourbon, explaining that is was not his intention to use it as a beverage, for he was unalterably opposed to drinking while business matters were under consideration, but that he would take a few snifters purely as a throat- emollient and brain-laxative. Having advanced and accepted the theory that the wearing of coats hampered the free play of one's fancy, we settled down in our shirt-sleeves, cosey and comfortable, to lay hold of a full-grown idea, with side-whiskers and a white waistcoat, that would be a kind and indulgent parent to us and save us from having to work. Dear reader, have you ever tried to think up the Big Idea not some fool scheme for saving the Nation, or improving the yield of sugar- beets, or making people subscribe to your tire- JACK SPURLOCK-- PRODIGAL 143 some old paper but have you ever reached up into the blue empyrean and grabbed at a star in its course, and tried to pull it down to earth by the tail ? I used to think that the astronomers guessed or lied about the distance to the nearest star, but now I 'm rather inclined to think that they 've understated their case. I 'd been groping around on the edges of space till my brain was fairly stupefied by the vastness of the void, when the Major's voice called me back. "Jack," he was saying reflectively, "has it ever occurred to you that there might be a fortune in a reversible rail ?" I admitted that it never had, and asked what sort of a rail and how you reversed it. "A railroad rail, of cou'se," the Major re turned, sitting up. "A rail that, when it has served its purpose on one side, can simply be turned over and made to enter into a new career of usefulness on the other. By Geo'ge, suh, I wonder that no one has ever thought of that befoM" "It certainly does sound pretty good," I re turned judicially. "Sounds pretty good, suh ?" The Major cried, springing to his feet and gesticulating enthusias tically. "You bet it sounds pretty good. It sounds I 4 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL like a revolution in modern railroadin', suh! It sounds like a plantation back home, suh, fo' me, and a mansion on Fifth Avenue fo' you! Think of the millions no, I would not exag gerate if I said billions, Jack of rails thrown away to rust and rot every year." I, too, was on my feet now, dancing around with excitement, but, even as I reached to give the Major's hand a congratulatory shake, a chilling doubt struck me. "Has it occurred to you, Major," I ventured, "that if both the top and the bottom of the rail were rounded in the same way, we might not be able to make the blamed thing stand up ?" But the Major's cup of happiness was not to be dashed by doubts. "A detail, my deah boy," he exclaimed, waving it aside; "a triflin' detail, that any fo' dollar-a-day mechanic can fix fo' us. We 've struck it, suh struck it first crack out of the box," and then we both started talking at once, with now and then a question like: "Will the Steel Trust dig down in its sock to pay for this? I guess!" or an exclamation like: "Al- lowin' that we get royalties on only fifty million tons a year," ringing out above the rough-house. Well, by and by we calmed down a little, and I was for going out for a walk, so long as we had the Idea safely caged, but the Major said no JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 145 that while the cards were running right we ought to press our luck and hive up some more ideas. So we went at it again, both eager with the excite ment of the chase, the Major baying along in the lead like an old hound. We struck a good many false scents, but inside of half an hour I was on my feet with a shout and an idea for "Luminous Letters" letters made of some luminous composition, "like er luminous paint, you know," I explained, that would admit of their being read both night and day. I drew a glowing and profitable picture of New York with all the signs, house numbers and billboards brilliant with our letters in short, as the Major phrased it, "a perfect luminous hell, suh." The excitement and profit-taking over this idea had barely subsided when I came to my feet again and explained my "Timed Inks" to the Major " Inks of some ingenious chemical com position, you know, timed to fade out completely in thirty, sixty or ninety days, as one may wish. Think of the drivelling love letters one could write, the incriminating secrets one could put on paper, the four-months-after-date notes one could sign, the - ' but the Major, fairly weep ing with joy, was pounding me on the back and crying: 146 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "My boy, my boy; my deah, deah boy! What imagination! What genius! What a blank boon to humanity!" When we returned to our knitting after this, we had a long barren spell, but finally the Major gave the short, sharp "Ahem!" which presaged an important announcement from him. "Jack," he began with irritating deliberation, so that I should not be caught unprepared for and be shocked by the whale which he was about to produce: "have you ever seen one of these compressed er atmosphere equipments, with which houses and hotels are cleansed and reno vated ?" "Yes, yes," I answered impatiently. "What is it?" "An admirable invention, suh; but has it ever occurred to you that its promoters have over looked a large, and, I think I may safely add, an exceedin'ly profitable field of usefulness ?" "No it never has; but I '11 bet they have. What is it?" "You are correct in yo* su'mise, suh. It 's ho'ses ho'ses, Jack," reiterated the Major, per mitting himself to warm up. "How ? Yes of course," I ventured, willing and anxious to cheer, but, as yet, not quite sure what for. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 147 "And the idea will introduce itself, suh," the Major explained. "We will walk into any livery-stable in New Yo'k, hire a rig, drive around to the compressed air establishment, and run the er sucker or whatever they call the appliance that draws out the dirt over one- half of the ho'se. Then we '11 take him back to the stable, shinin' on one side like a brown satin dress, and, by contrast, lookin' on the other like an old do '-mat. Will the curiosity of the stable- keeper be excited, suh ? Will he want the refinin' touch of the er sucker applied to the do'- mat side ? Will he leap at the chance to contract with us, at a fairly remunerative price, say five dollars a head, to polish up all the plugs in his stable ? I reckon we may answer in the affir mative. I am tol'ably certain that, from this single idea, speakin' conservatively, mind you, Jack, we shall make no less than one hundred thousand dollars." It certainly looked that way to me just then, and I told the Major that he had undoubtedly got hold of the hottest dog in the frankfurter can. After that we tried it for a little while longer, but the casting up of the whale had apparently put the kibosh on the game for the time being. So, as it was now one in the morning, we separated in high hopes and spirits, the Major bidding me 148 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL good night with: "A grand, an inspiring a lucrative evenin's work. Yo' future is assured, Jack." I was so excited over it all that it took me a long time to get to sleep, and, when I finally dropped off, it was to dream of driving up to Anita's door in a coach and four. Somehow, it was different at the breakfast table next morning. Something had happened to the ideas that made us regard them and each other a little peevishly. In fact, we acted like two men who had been out on a bat together, with each waiting to see how much the other remembered of the disgraceful doings of the night before. Finally, we edged up to our inventions, and I began to express vague doubts about the feasibility of this and the practicability of that. In the morning light, one of the ideas looked suspiciously like our old friend, Perpetual Motion, and the others sounded like planks from a Populist platform. The Major nodded sagely, and deprecated our committing our fortunes to any of the ideas until after we had subjected them to "the most searchin' examination and the most ruthless tests. Though I am convinced, suh," he concluded with furrowed brow, "that these ideas contain the germs of some exceedin'ly useful and valuable discoveries. But caution and conservatism must be our watchwords. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 149 We will make a note of these inventions fo' future reference,'"' which he did. Then, after breakfast, we went around to a livery-stable, where there was "the finest little trottin' mare outside of the old State," and smoothed away the lines of our high thinking with a little drive out into the country. That was the beginning of a two-weeks' debauch of scheming. All day long we prowled through the streets of New York, hunting for some sign that would betray the hiding-place of the Big Idea; after dinner we retired to the Major's room, lit our pipes, and tried to smoke it out of our heads. Every night we went to bed in a haze of optimism, potentially millionaires; every morning we came down to breakfast in a fog of pessimism, practically paupers. No doubts disturbed the Major, for he still had several hundred dollars left, but after this sort of thing had been going on for a fortnight, and we had accumulated wild ideas enough to endow a ward in a lunatic asylum, I decided that we must think up a producer, or that I must go to work, for I could n't continue to sponge on the Major. So as soon as we were settled down in his room for the evening, I opened the proceedings with : " Major, we Ve got to quit smoking this kind of dope and switch off to something practical. i 5 o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL We 're not getting anywhere, and never will this way." The Major sat up, looking surprised and a little hurt at my businesslike tone. I was rather surprised at it myself. "My deah boy," he began reprovingly, "you must restrain yo' impatience. Rashness and impetuosity," he continued, his voice gathering assurance as he went along, "are admirable things in their place, but they have no place in business, suh." "But they have had in our proceedings," I persisted brutally. "Would n't any bunch of experts that was handed a list of our ideas declare that we had progressive paranoia, and recommend a life sentence for us on the strength of that pre- digested pie scheme ?" The shot told and the Major looked miserable again, for the invention had been the darling child of his brain, the pampered pet of our smoker the evening before. "Let us, purely fo' the sake of argument, Jack, admit that we have been playin' on a dead card," he replied. "What would you suggest ? I am one of those who welcome criticism, suh, but it must be construc tive, not destructive, criticism." Of course he did so does every one, meaning by constructive criticism, praise. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 151 "Exactly," I answered. "We 've been pawing the air for an idea. Now let 's get after one in a scientific manner, applying psychological prin ciples to our problem, and if that won't fetch it, give up and go to work." "By Geo'ge, suh!" the Major exclaimed, all enthusiasm again as soon as he saw that my proposal did not involve the suppression of his favourite game, but simply a new way of playing it. "Why did n't we think of that befo' ? We 've been wastin' time, Jack. Let us try yo' method without delay. If one cock won't fight, we must gafF another. Explain yo'self, fully, my deah boy, and count on my hearty cooperation." "Well," I began, drawing for my ideas on my brief association with Jim during the days of the Direct Command, "what we want is an article that will sell for a small price, so it must be simple; that will pay us a whopping profit, so it must go more on the cleverness of the idea than its intrinsic value; that will advertise itself, for we have no money with which to buy fame for it. So we must think up some tasty, trashy tomfool novelty, that we can hitch on to a popular idea, or man, or movement, and send forth into the cold, but silly world to hustle for its parents. That 's not the Big Idea, I know; it 's the idiotic one, but the market for idiocy is unlimited, I 've 152 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL been told, even though I have n't been able to place myself. Besides, we '11 be working in a more congenial field. Now, to begin : What 's the most popular thing in the country to-day ?" "Our honahed President," the Major replied unhesitatingly. "He fits yo' description to a T." "I love our President with a T," I commented, "because his name is Teddy; because he has Teeth, and because he 's a Terror." "Exactly, suh," the Major returned simply. "He's not only the most popular man in the country, but a popular idea, and a popular move ment as well. But I can hardly see that that takes us anywhere." I could n't either, but to gain time and to create a diversion that would give me an oppor tunity to rescue my theory from such prompt exploding, I answered: "I 'm not so sure about his popularity, Major. It seems to me that there are signs of its waning. All this letter-writing and calling men liars is making a good many people tired, don't you think ?" "I most certainly do not think at least in the affirmative, suh," the Major returned hotly. "On the contrary, suh, the country is proud that its Chief Executive has convictions and the courage to express them in terms that no scoundrel can misunderstand and that no gentleman can wear." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 153 "But Major," I interrupted, "how can any one effectively resent anything that the President says about him ?" " How, suh ? How, suh ?" The Major snorted belligerently, and jumped from his chair. Si lently stepping off ten paces, he wheeled and suddenly discharged his answer, as though at the word to fire: "I have every reason to believe, suh, though I am not at liberty to disclose the sou'ces of my info'mation, that the President holds himself in readiness to give the fullest personal satisfaction' and he paused to let the words soak in "to anyone who may demand it." I had n't been able to think of anything yet, so there was nothing to do but throw another at the Major: "Well, granting that," I put forth, "still, a lot of people are beginning to think that Teddy 's a mere noise." " I don't care, suh, and the people don't care, if President Roosevelt" -and the Major re proved me for my too familiar Teddy with a pause and a glance- "is nothin' but a noise; he 's shoutin' fire, and frightenin' off the scoun drels who have been preparin' to commit arson with the er palladium of our liberties. I am only sorry, suh, that his enthusiasm fo j manly spo'ts does not extend to those games of chance which so many gentlemen of an older generation 154 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL found stimulatin' to their highest faculties. Poker and faro, suh, are, I regret to say, the only pursuits that have not felt his reformin' and purifyin' and revivifyin' influence." As he finished, I saw my chance to retreat, without invalidating my theory; "Well, Major," I replied, "you may be right, but there 's no use in our discussing it, for some one else thought of him first and sprang the Teddy bear. Probably got the idea just this way." "By Geo'ge, suh! I reckon you are right," the Major returned. " But it does seem as if there ought to be mo' than one idea in so versatile a President. How much do those blank Teddy bears cost, Jack ?" "Oh, anywhere from one to ten dollars!" "From one to ten dollars! Astoundin'! Why, suh, they 're only fo' little plutocrats then ! There should be good money in popularisin' the Teddy bear, Jack makin' a fair article that would sell fo' two-bits, and so bringin' it within the reach of the masses." "I'm afraid not," I answered. "The dollar ones are punk as it is. It seems impossible to give them that bully, idiotic expression for less than two or three bones." "Or improvin' it adaptin' it in some way to the children's elders, thereby openin' up new JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 155 fields of usefulness to it, and, as you so thought fully observed, enablin' us to take advantage of the advertisin' it has already enjoyed." "How?" " Teddy," the Major began musingly " Teddy Rough Riders San Juan Hill Booker T. Brownsville -- tennis strenuous life dear Maria dig the canal rubber Taft squeeze 'em third term square deal trusts - mollycoddle Harriman liar dee-lighted -dee-whoop! I've got it, Jack! I've got it, suh! Listen here! A little rubber Teddy bear, that you can carry in your pocket, and when you squeeze it, you inflate its tongue, thereby causin' it to stick out "And? " "On that long, protrudin' tongue is painted: "Dee-lighted!" "Yes, and " "When anyone asks you to take a drink, or to have a cigar, or to do anythin' that calls fo' an affirmative, do you answer yes? No, suh! You take out yo' Teddy bear and squeeze it at him! And Jack, listen here! When anyone asks you if the President will accept a third term, you don't discuss the question with him or allow yo'self to be drawn into any undignified argument about why he should or why he should n't take 156 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL the nomination: you simply squeeze yo' bear in his face." "Why, Major," I began, beginning to get a little excited myself, "this looks like the real hot tabas " "This is somethin' big, Jack the Big Idea, in fact," he interrupted. "I have felt fo' several days that we were tremblin' on the verge of an impo'tant discovery, but I never dreamed of any thing as tremenjous and as far-reachin' in its consequences as this. Why, suh, this little article absolutely assures the reelection of our honahed President fo' a third term. It means the con- foundin' of his enemies! It will put the hell- houn's of the System on the run! Think of the sale fo' it Convention week! It will sweep the country like wild-fire, and settle the whole thing. It means, suh, aside from the fo'tune that it will bring us, positions of honah and dignity under the Administration: A mission abroad fo' me I have always felt that I was peculiarly fitted fo' a diplomatic career somethin' just as good at home fo' you'. Teddy is loyal to his friends. He cannot ignore our services, suh." "He probably will," I replied, "but what 's the odds so long as we can cash in on the idea ? Then, if your fancy runs to swelling around in a plaited shirt and being a bum statesman, you JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 157 can go West and buy one of those marked-down Senatorships. But it 's me for a quiet, restful vacation at the St. Regis." I would n't let my imagination carry me so far as the Major's took him and he not only gave free rein to his fancy, but had a complete runaway for I had a sobering fear that, when we sat down to breakfast with this latest child of our brains, we should both be for leaving the horrid thing on the steps of the nearest foundling asylum. But even while I was dressing next morning, the idea still looked good to me, and down the hall I could hear the Major's bass rolling out: "How I 1-o-ove that pretty ya-a-1-ler ga-a-I-1-1, Do-o-own Mo-o-bile ! " That was a sure sign that he was pleased with himself. And when we met at the breakfast table, there was none of the usual laboured conversation about the weather, and the higher life, and the shameful doings in the Senate, any thing except our pitiful inventions of the preceding night; but the Major greeted me with a radiant face and wrung my hand with a rapture unimpaired by sleep and reflection. "Then it's a whiz!" I exclaimed. "My deah boy," the Major replied, "it is not only a whiz, but a hummah! You are in on the 158 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL ground flo' of King Solomon's Mines, Limited to us two." Things went with a rush that day. First we filed a caveat on the idea, and then the Major placed an order with a manufacturing firm that he knew of for as many of the dee-lighted bears as his now very limited capital would pay for. These details attended to, we returned to his room to plan out our campaign. In that the Major was thoroughly at home; in fact, I found that he already had the details pretty well worked out in his head. "Jack," he began, "this thing will lend itself to original and takin' methods of introduction better than anythin' I have ever had the pleasure of presentin' to the public. Aside from the entertainin' and amusin' features of the little article, all of which we must present adequately, there is a splendid chance for a campaign of education among our voters in callin' their at tention to its political impo'tance. I shall include in my speech a complete exposure of the System, suh, and of its crimes against the country, and make all cur agents memorise it. Of cou'se we shall, owin' to our lack of capital, have to do the preliminary work of introduction ourselves." The crisis which I had been dreading had come. I saw myself standing on a dry-goods box in a JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 159 crowded street, hoarsely inviting the passers-by to gaze on my shame and to buy my silly wares. In my cowardly heart, I felt that I could never do it. And yet I could n't refuse to bear my share of the heat and burden of the day. "Could n't we, Major," I suggested weakly, " find a partner with capital who 'd let us go right into the thing on a big scale ?" "No, suh!" the Major returned decisively. "None of that in mine when I 've got a good thing. A partner with capital is American fo' hog, suh. He wants half the profits fo' his capital and the other half fo' himself. Yo' share is the glory of havin' the little article named after you and the bad debts. Not fo' Majah Geo'ge Magoffin Jackson, suh." " I 'm only afraid," I admitted, hating myself for trying to crawl, "that our interests might suffer if I tried my hand at actual street work. You see, I 've never had any experience at that sort of thing, and I 'm naturally of a rather timid and retiring disposition; so perhaps - " I 've thought of that," the Major interrupted. "Of cou'se you 've got to be broken in to speak in public some time, but this matter is too impo'- tant to be trusted to anyone who is n't thoroughly experienced in er addressin* an audience. But we shall be able to make full use of yo' talents, 160 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL never you fear, Jack. Now my idea, and I think I may say without boastin' that it will excite mo' than the passin' interest of the thoughtless, is this: I first, and afterward every agent that represents us, will be accompanied by a man to pass the little article around among the crowd. Nothing new in that, suh, you say. No, but each of these men will be dressed up as a big Teddy bear, head and all, and somewhere under his er hide he will hold a large air ball, connected by a tube to a collapsible tongue of very thin rubber, such as the little bears in his basket have. Well, suh, every time I make a tellin' point in my speech, the bear assistin' me will squeeze the rubber ball, thereby inflatin' the tongue and makin' it stick out at the audience. Perhaps, suh, when the people see that tongue protrudin', with Dee- lighted painted on it, they won't shout themselves hoa'se and tumble over themselves to buy the little article ?" "Bully!" I applauded. "They'll fight for 'em/' "You bet it 's bully, suh," the Major continued. "And, Jack, you are to be the first bear." Why, oh, why had n't I seen his drift sooner and knocked his fool scheme ? I was in a panic at the thought of lending myself to this hideous masquerade. " Me!" I exclaimed. "I could n't JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 161 be a bear, really. I 'm a wretched actor, and besides I'm I'm superstitious about bears afraid of them I really believe I was marked by one." The Major would n't listen to me. "Nonsense, Jack," he returned. "You '11 make a perfect Teddy bear. The part fits you to a T, and after you get over the stage fright that is inseparable from a first appearance in public, you will do yo'self proud. Besides, we can't afFo'd at this stage of the game to squander our resou'ces hirin' outside talent." It was no use. I had been elected, and there was no resigning from the inevitable, if I wanted to share in the profits. Besides, I reflected, it was better than having to do the barking, for my face would be covered, and so there was no chance that anyone would recognise me. I yielded without further argument and, accom panied by the Major, went out to be measured for a Teddy-bear suit. For the next week, while the bears were being made, the Major was in the throes of composition, preparing his great speech on the iniquities of the System and the peculiar virtues of the Teddy bear. I divided my days between the Zoo in Central Park, where I studied the habits and deportment of bears, and a corner of the Major's room, where I prac- 162 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL tised jig-steps and growling, until I had attained a fair degree of proficiency in both. " Splendid, Jack!" the Major would exclaim, glancing up from his work whenever I managed a peculiarly ferocious growl. "That last one was thrillin'; it had the ring of sincerity in it. It 's those little realistic touches that open the great heart and pocket-book of our American public, suh." Or again, "Growl louder, suh! With blood on yo' jaws. I 'm touchin' up yo' namesake, that old scoundrel, Con Spurlock!" So long as our appearance on the street was still in the future, I felt brave enough about the part I was to play, but when the little articles, as the Major always called them, were delivered, and my Teddy-bear suit was sent home by the theatrical costumer, I found myself giving way again to dark forebodings. And when, finally, the day came, and I climbed into my Teddy- bear suit behind the prescription counter of an East Side drug-store, near which the Major had chosen our first stand, I felt like a diver dressed for the plunge into unknown depths, where goggle-eyed octopi and inquisitive sharks might be lined up waiting for a quick lunch. Maybe we did n't draw a crowd ? and quick ? It was like a three-alarm fire. The people came running from every direction, dragging the children JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 163 with them; it almost seemed as if men popped up from trap-doors at our feet and materialised out of the fourth dimension. The Major lost no time, but went right into action as if he 'd been tipped off to remember the Maine. Mounted on an empty box, silk hat tilted back, and holding me by a chain, he bel lowed, stormed, bullied, laughed, joked, told stories, gave advice, and made me dance and play the promiscuous fool, until the street was half blocked. When he saw that the crowd was with him to a man, he explained the frivolous uses to which the little article could be put, and they caught on with a roar. "We 've got 'em goin', son," he exclaimed to me in a delighted aside. "Now watch me stampede them," and he launched suddenly into an attack on the System that was a corker. He deprecated the House, he deplored the Senate, and he damned Wall Street. He excoriated Rogers, walloped Morgan, skinned Rockefeller, flayed Harriman, and in a tone that scared a ten-foot hole in the crowd around him, demanded answers to some extremely embarrassing questions. As the pluto crats did n't appear to have a spokesman present, he held up their heads to the scorn and execration of the populace. " But, my fellow-citizens," he concluded, "there is one who stands firm fo' 164 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL you against the hellish arts and heartless machina tions of this destroyin' Moloch; one who wraps around him the precious and priceless palladium of our blood-bought liberties and dares the hell- houn's of the System to lay a finger on it; one whose er teeth are bared and whose voice is raised in protest" -aside to me: "Growl like hell, Jack" "against these dastardly as saults on the er bulwarks of the people's rights; and this man, my fellow-citizens, is fittin'ly symbolised by the noble denizen of the American wilderness that stands beside me playful and open-hearted with the friends of our glorious Re public" "Dance, Jack" "fierce and thirstin' fo' the gore of its enemies." "Put up your dukes and growl, Jack." " I stand here appealin* to yo' patriotism, not yo* pocket-books. I don't want yo' money, but yo' moral support. The enemies of our honahed President are demandin' that he adhere to some foolish words spoken in the heat and exaltation of gettin' what he wanted and for- gettin' that he er might want it again. We must save him from these enemies and from himself if he needs savin*. So I repudiate, openly and fearlessly, his declaration that he will not accept another nomination fo' the Presi dency; I answer you that he must and shall run JACK SPT&RLOC& PRODIGAL 165 a'gaiW, and 1 I offer to each a ! nd' every gentleman present, fo' the nominal, the insignificant, the trifliri* sum of a quarter, twenty-five cents 1 ,- two- bits, this little article which I hold' iri : my haftd; It will enable you, one and severally, t&' answer 5 decisively that momentous question: Will Teddy accept a third term ?" At this prearranged cue, I squeezed the rubber ball and the long tongue shot out at the crowd. "Dee-lighted!" the mob roared as they sato it, artd : pushed forward to buy. Just then, a coachman who was driving a team of spirited bays, that' were drawing a smart little brougham, attempted to push through the drovvd. A glimpse of a bear, even if it is only a Teddy bear, is n't the thing best calculated to soothe a nervous horse, and the moment the pair caught sight of me they reared and plunged wildly: As the coachman was losing his head, and as the people' were tumbling back over one ari^ other, instead of trying to get a hold on the horses' bridles tb steady them an absurdly simple thing to db I obeyed the impulse of the moment arid started to struggle out of my bear suit, both to remove the cause of the panic and to lend a Hand! I had succeeded in freeing myself of the bear's Head, when the horses took a sudden jump 'for- 166 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL ward under the coachman's whip, and I found myself looking through the open window of the brougham, straight into the startled eyes of Anita. For an awful moment we stared at each other, amazement in her face, horror in mine. Then, unconsciously, but convulsively, my hand gripped the rubber ball and that awful bear tongue shot out the cheerful greeting, "Dee- lighted!" just as a fresh cut from the driver's whip started the horses off. Behind me a long rebel yell went up, and, turning, I found the Major struggling with a mob of hoodlums who had taken advantage of the diversion to raid our stock. It was a lovely rough-house, and the Southern troops fought nobly, but, as the Major explained in reviewing the disaster, "we were wo'n down like Lee in Virginia, suh, by the brute fo'ce of superior numbers." Like a saucer of milk by a stray cat, our stock was lapped up by the crowd, and then we were threatened by a new division of the mob, who howled for our blood because the horses had tried to trample their children to death. Explanations that we were not in collusion with the driver of the brougham proving futile, we fought our way, shoulder to shoulder, back to the friendly drug-store. "Well, Major," I asked, once we were safely JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 167 inside, "are you hurt?" for the old fellow's face looked like the sun of Austerlitz. "Not physically, suh," panted that indomitable warrior, squinting at me through the eye that was still in commission, "but in the best and highest feelin's of a gentleman. I doubt, suh, whether such po' trash is wo'th savin' from the System." Then, by way of after-thought: "And we 're paupers, son; our last dashed dollar was in that lot of the little article." CHAPTER VIII IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL SPENDS A PLEASANT EVENING WELL, we were certainly up against it for keeps, as A. Tennyson so beautifully phrases it in his unpublished works. The Major, after an excited evening, during which he traced the responsibility for our disaster step by step to the very doors of the System, and brought himself to the verge of apoplexy, settled into a lethargy of solitaire-playing, from which no artfully devised scheme of mine for coining mil lions, no matter how extravagant, could rouse him. So I turned to the Pagan philosophers for consolation, only to discover that helpful reflections lie cold and heavy on an empty stomach. Philosophy is a pastime for the prosperous; a poor man can't afford it. No one but a John D. Rockefeller could hand out such phrases as, "Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity"; and he would n't really mean it unless he were getting a rebate and some other fellow the adversity. Poverty has a pretty back, but an ugly face. She 's like those girls that people praise so highly 168 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 169 for their sterling qualities, and take such in credible pains to avoid. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that the whole bunch of philosophers, from Aristotle to Zeno, were fakes, and only good for light reading on a full stomach. All pagans, B. C. and A. D., to the contrary, bar none from Epictetus to Andy Carnegie, there 's only one real advantage in being broke your friends don't come to you and say, "Cheer up, old man; think how much worse it would have been if you 'd lost: your health!" For, when you 're as flat as we were, you have n't any friends, and your health is a positive detriment to you it simply gives you am appetite that you can't afford to satisfy. I suppose I took my troubles pretty hard, but no one, excepting Job possibly, ever had a bigger bunch, and I was n't setting up in competition; with Bible keroes. I stood it round the house for two days, trying to rou-se- the Major, first with tempting schemes, then* by offering fio let him: deal a little faro 1 for me the chips to be redeemed when we got Hhe money but it wa's no use. He stuck to solitaire, crooning Moody and Satikey hymns,, punctuated with an occasional expletive when- the right card failed to materialise. So finally I slipped off and left him to play himself into a 1 70 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL happier frame of mind, while I called on a number of indifferent and impertinent employers. I was game for anything from a bank presidency down, but the men I tackled with my proposition had no sporting blood. I could n't seem to interest anybody in anything I said, except, "Good-bye." It certainly looked as if I were nobody's darling. Returning at the end of the second day from this futile chase of the anise-seed bag, I stuck my head in at the Major's door. The old fellow was still at it. Sitting there in the firelight, with his fine, venerable head bowed over the table, he was a perfect picture of your dear, sainted old grandpop that is, if you cut out the cards and some of the language. He was singing softly as he played: "Let the lower lights be blank that blankety blank ace bur-er-nin', Cast a gleam-er-ac dog my cats cross the wave, Some po' shipwrecked stung again, blank it drown-in' " Then he broke off suddenly, for he had caught sight of me, standing in the doorway and smiling through my discouragement. "Hullo! Major," I called. "I see that good old Doctor Jekyll's still trying to convert the naughty, card-playing Mr. Hyde." The Major jumped up at the first word and ran toward me. "My po' boy!" he cried, seizing JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 171 my hands. "I feared so. It came to me in a flash, after you sneaked out this mo'nin', and I have reproached myself bitterly all day fo' my selfish abso'ption in my triflin' disappoint ment. No, suh! Don't deny it, suh!" he hurried on, as he saw me reaching for a handy lie. "I know it; I see it in yo' face, suh. You 've been lookin' fo' a job," and there was both sorrowful accusation and forgiveness for my fault in his voice. "But, Major," I protested, grappling with the truth like a perfect little George Washington, now that I 'd been caught with the hatchet on my person, "I have n't found a job, worse luck! and here it is the end of the week, with our board due, and a lot of perfectly bully shows in town, and grouse in season." The Major's face wrinkled for a moment at this frank statement of our disadvantages, then mellowed with genial inspiration. " I 'm ashamed of you, Jack, fo' lettin* our triflin' reverses get on yo' nerves and lead you to take such a foolish cou'se. As fo' our boa'd, our landlady, though a trifle er unpolished, seems to have a good heart. We '11 have her up at once and reassure her about her little matter. Then, as we both need some simple relaxation, we might effect a triflin' loan on some of our i/2 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL superfluities and take in a good show, with just a bite of somethin' hot afterward." The answer to my objections was so complete, and, I confess, so satisfactory to me, that I .simply rang the bell and asked the slovenly maid to tell the landlady that the Major would like to see her. She appeared in a moment, red-faced and sweaty from the kitchen, and bringing with her odours that were more than a hint of what we had had for luncheon and what we were to have for dinner. The Major Courteously wa.ved her to a chair, but she ignore^ his gesture and stood with an anticipatory smirk on her face. She was ac customed to being sent for every Saturday night to receive our board. It ? s a ,bad habit to get people into the way of expecting anything, espe cially money, at a .certain time. For, when they don't get it, they are disappointed, and I hate t# cause pain. "Mr. Spurlock and mysejf," the Major began in his largest and most ^xpansjve manner, q.uite as if he were distributing presents from a Christ mas tree, '''find ourselves temporarily sho't of funds, owin' to the .difRculty of rnakin' .collecr tions durin' the present annoyin' tightness her forty ; odd years of life must have been something shocking. No one but .-a woman who 'd jbeen jilted at twenty, deserted at thirty, and -bilked by thousands >af unscrupulous, but resourceful, boarders could 'hay.e met the Major's affable explanation with so sudden and complete .a refutation of it as came to her lips. While he was talking, I noticed curious change in her appearance. The red in -her face deepened into purple, !but I took this for a Datura! fading , out of the external fires, rather than a lighting ; up of the internal ones. But when be -finished the flare^-up was so iCompiete that I feit she must have used some sort of mental kierosene to get ;sue:h burning words at such S;hort notice. "Inconvenience me!" she .echoed with bitter scorn. "Oh, no, certainly not! And do youse think I pay e#t a^id jb.uy food for youse with the kind of hot &if -that yotise have been giving me ? Shell out or getx^ut without your trunks !" she ad.ded significantly. i 7 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "But, my dear madam," the Major protested, momentarily appalled by this outburst. "Don't youse give me any of your dear madams, but give me my money or I '11 call a cop," the landlady interrupted with a scream. "Collec tions is slow, is they ? And did one of your customers guess which shell the little pea was under ? Or would n't the come-on take the package of green goods, Major George Guff and Mister Jack Spurious ?" "Come, come," I ventured, beginning to warm up a little myself; "that kind of talk won't do." "No, you bet it won't do," was the energetic response. "Money's the only thing that talks with me, young feller. It 's none of my business how youse get it, but youse have got to get it or git," which struck me as a pretty concise sum ming up of the New York Idea. It was as if a drunken subaltern had struck the Emperor William in the face. The Major's blue eyes went black, and he stiffened up until dignity and danger fairly radiated from his person. " Madam," he began and his tone was the one that he would have used if he had been reaching for his revolver to shoot a gambler whom he had caught cheating "yo* money will be ready fo' you in one hour, and these appahtments at yo' disposal five minutes later. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 175 Until then, Mr. Spurlock and myself prefer to be alone," and he opened the door. The landlady looked at him, extinguished her anger as quickly as she 'd kindled it, and went out without a word. There was really nothing to say, but, if I 'd done that to her, she 'd have said something anyway. "Well, Major," I ventured. "She's not exactly what you 'd call confiding." "She is not, suh, exactly what you 'd call any- thin' but names, and, as we could n't cuss her out befo' her face, we must n't behind her back. After all, she 's only po' white trash, a she-devil that 's hung over the fire in her hell-hole of a kitchen, cookin' fo' tin-ho'n spo'ts and sho't- card men so long that she can't understand that she 's been entertainin' gentlemen unawares. Still, it 's very annoyin' and very humiliatin'. I reckon I '11 have to negotiate a triflin' loan on old reliable, Jack," and he tapped his watch- pocket and reached for his hat. Then, as he went out the door, he added: "And if that pa'simonious houn' of a Hebrew usurer offers me less than fifty I '11 throw him to the hogs." He came back with fifty. I 'm not given to introspection, because when I look within I rarely find anything, but I confess that while the Major was out I had a little serious 176 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL conversation with myself, and that the question of going to the Governor and crying "enough'* was among the matters which came up for consid eration. I knew he would take me back, but he would do it in about the same spirit as that in which he would absorb a weak railroad. I had been pretty severely spanked by "the world's rough hand," but as between that and my parent's, I preferred to remain on the knees of the gods, even if I must continue to occupy an undignified position there. That settled and off my mind, I turned to and began to pack up our belongings so that, by the time the Major returned with the money, everything was in the trunks except our evening clothes. We quickly changed into these, sent our baggage to a modest little hotel, where we could get a room over night for a couple of dollars, then paid the subdued, but still suspicious, landlady, and were out of the house within the stipulated hour. "And a good job, too, suh," commented the Major, as we went down the steps; "fo', in all my varied experience, I have never, suh, encountered a female who concen trated so much malice and venom in her bosom." "Nor so many grease spots on it," I added. And so- we passed out into the night and on to Delrnonico's. "I feel, Jack," began the Major, as we took JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 177 our seats in the cafe, "that after our tryin' ex periences I need a little humourin' befo' I can regain my faith in mankind, and especially in that po'tion of it which is engaged in the boa'din'- house business. Now what would you say to a cup of clear green turtle; a bit of broiled pompano; some er grilled sweet potatoes around a grouse not high, waiter, but middlin' well hung; some nice, crisp romaine, with a dash of chives in the dressin'; and a quart of Pol Roger '89 to wash it down ? Does that meet with yo* approbation, suh, or would you like to add a few fixin's ?" I answered with a nod, but as soon as the waiter was out of hearing I whispered hoarsely: "Will the bank stand the strain, Major, and how about breakfast ?" "My deah boy," the Major returned, a slight shade of annoyance marring his expression of perfect contentment, "you sometimes say things that lead me to fear you have the soul of a blank Yankee money-lender," and that was all the satisfaction I got just then. Later, however, after we had finished our coffee and cigars, and were strolling up the Avenue, I found that the Major had fifteen dollars left, which was better than I had dared hope. We had lingered so long in the cafe that the 178 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL people were already pouring out of the theatres, but as neither of us was in the humour for going to bed, we continued to stroll aimlessly along, watching the lights and the gay crowds, until we found ourselves approaching darker and quieter streets. At one of these the Major stopped suddenly. "By Geo'ge, Jack!" he exclaimed. "Handy's is just around the co'ner. Let's drop in and watch the play fo' half an hour. It 's a square game, one of the few left in this country that a gentleman need not be ashamed to sit in." "But will they let us in?" I questioned. I knew Handy's by reputation, as a place where a Pittsburg millionaire could, and usually did, drop anything from one to a hundred thousand, but where retail gamblers were severely frowned on. I doubted whether any two men with combined assets of fifteen dollars could pass its portals, except to make an ignominious exit. I elaborated this doubt to the Major. "Nonsense," he replied reprovingly. "You must get over this vulgah No'thern notion that a man 's simply the amount of currency that he happens to have upon his person. Come right along with me," and, almost before I knew it, the door of the house had swung open with a polite, " Good evening, Major," which I found, JACK SPURLOCK- PRODIGAL 179 on peering into the gloom, came from an obse quious attendant. He passed us in to a second man, who relieved us of our hats and coats. I still felt a little abashed at venturing into this luxurious lair of the tiger, without being able to risk a thousand or two for the privilege, but the Major, a superb figure in his evening clothes, preceded me up the stairs with a serene confidence that he would be welcome, which characterised his entrance into any society. I began to ap preciate as never before how much of my old self-confidence and self-esteem had been cut off with my allowance. Six months back I should have been cocksure of my welcome in any gamb ling-house and have ascribed it to some peculiarly engaging quality in myself. At the door of the salon, we were met by Handy himself, a quiet, suave man, who greeted the Major cordially, asked him where he had been keeping himself for the past year, and shook hands with me as if he were my host at a little affair where my company, and not my money was wanted. Then he turned back to my com panion. " Playing to-night, Major ?" he questioned, quite in the tone that one would use if one were asking a friend if his appetite were good. "I really don't know, Handy," the Major i8o JACK SPURLOCK , PRODIGAL returned' carelessly. " t have n't been in- very good fo'm lately, but I should say that the blank luck was about due to change. 1 reckon I 1 '11 pike along through 1 a deal or two and see" hbw the cards- ruft befo' I leave." Handy smiled, and, to show his understanding of his fellow-professional's niettle, gratiously offered- to take off the limit for the Maj&tf if he should find himself in the humour tfc>' pla^'. Ap parently, my dear old friend had not been a piker* in his day, a ? mo nm . " Here, let 's get outside, where we can talk," I suggested, and I piloted the Major out of the house. "This is dashed sad, Jack," the Major com mented as we passed through the great gates to the public road. " I don't think there 's anything so confoundedly sad about it," I returned. "I Ve got the first real job of my life, and I 'm earning money, too, you bet." " I did n't refer to you," the Major returned, "but to this blank piece of vulgah Neroism," and he indicated the grounds that we had just 2 8o JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL left. "To one, suh, whose tastes were fo'med in the old days, when the classic simplicity of our Southern homes expressed the breedin' of their owners, this so't of thing is very painful. Blood will tell, suh, and bad blood will tell on itself, no matter how hard the architect may try to impress reticence on it." "True for you, Major; and now, how's the Governor." "Yo* father is well, Jack, and expectin' you; we 're goin' to dine with him at eight sharp to night." "I 'm not so sure about that," I countered. Though for weeks I had been ardently desiring such an invitation, now that the way was open I shrank from the awkwardness of that first five minutes. Besides, I wanted to find out just how far the Governor was willing to go in for giving me before I committed myself to forgiving him wholly. I was feeling pretty tame, but I still had a little of that perverse pride which keeps up half the foolish quarrels in the world that pride which makes a fellow fear that a generous overture will be construed as a confession of weakness. The Major, however, proved to be the prince of peacemakers. I had overheard enough to guess what line he had been working along with JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 281 father, and now the old fellow went right to my weak spot with: "Quit yo' meanness, Jack. Have n't you any human feelin's ? Have n't you any blank bowels of compassion ? Don't you know that yo' po' old father has been eatin' his dashed heart out, grievin', waitin', hopin', listenin', night after night, fo' the footsteps of his wanderin' boy ?" "He 's had a queer way of showing it," I demurred. "How else could he show it, suh, when his only son, the boy that he was dependin' on to be the prop and comfo't of his old age, after breakin* his heart, left his home to conso't with profligate companions ? Naturally, suh, he felt outraged in his finest feelin's." "You were the profligate companions, Major," I retorted with a grin. "And the rest of it was n't so one-sided as you argue." " I know that, Jack," the Major answered in a milder tone. "Yo' father's a powerful hand to make money, but raisin' children does n't seem to be his game. Now I reckon he 's beginnin* to understand that first he was too weak and then too harsh with you; that he tried to correct one series of mistakes with another; in sho't, suh, that he whip-sawed himself ofF the blank boa'd. He 's not the kind to do any apologisin', but he wants to 282 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL see you mighty bad, Jack, and just now he really needs you." "Needs me? Why?" I questioned, impressed by something in the Major's manner. " Don't you read the blank newspapers, suh ? Have n't you seen how that man in the White House has been houndin' him, exhaustin* the vocabulary of vituperation on him and our other great leaders of finance, abusin' them as male factors and criminals, and stirrin' up lawsuits against them ? We 've come to a pretty pass, suh, when the Chief Executive undermines con fidence, destroys prosperity, and wrecks business by violent and ill-considered tirades against men like yo' honahed father." And this from the author of that speech against "the hell-houns' of the System!" I stopped short in the road and fixed the old fellow with an accus ing eye. "Major, you 've been making money," I declared. For a moment but to do him justice, for only a moment the Major looked foolish. Then his chest swelled up, as it always did when he was preparing to bluff a thing out. "Dash it all, Jack!" he exploded, "why should n't I make money ? Is it a blank crime to make money in this dashed country ? Don't JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 283 tell me, suh, that you, too, are infected with the prevailin' contagion! That, just because I have been tryin' to lay by some little provision against want in my old age, I am to be branded as a criminal and hounded to a felon's grave. I will not submit to it, suh not even from you, Jack!" "Where did you get it? Been speculating?'* I asked, utterly ignoring this outburst. " My operations on the Exchange have not been unsuccessful," the Major returned, his wrath abating, but still on his dignity. "Bully for you! I hope you got away with a bale of their predatory wealth! I 'm with Tom Lawson all for busting the System by tak ing their hellish gains away from them," I explained. At this condoning of his defection to the enemy, the Major immediately came off the defensive: "Why did n't I know about this speculatin* business sooner ?" he demanded. " It 's my game, suh. You can bet the market to win, or copper it, and the house gets its regular rake-off. It 's just like faro and it 's dealt crooked just as often, only, by Geo'ge, suh, it 's respectable!" "And the Governor's been giving you tips ?" I hazarded. "Ye es; I suppose you'd call them tips," 284 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL the Major replied hesitatingly, "though I have n't been playin* them exactly." " How not exactly ?" "Well, suh, it's like this: While I did not doubt the sincerity of yo' father's belief in the stocks which he recommended in fact, I have every reason to suppose that his misplaced con fidence in them has cost him a considerable sum of money my trainin' has made me exceedin'ly slow to follow the advice of anyone that has an interest in the house - and yo' father deals oftener than he plays. So I coppered his info'- mation, and, instead of buyin', sold sho't." "Fine," I chuckled. "And made a hog- killing, by that self-satisfied gleam in your eye." "Not as such things go on 'Change," the Major protested modestly. "But by pressin' the blank luck with a judicious doublin' of my bets, I have managed to clean up about two hundred thousand dollars" "Hush, Major, and quit your fooling. Talk figures that I can understand. Remember, I 'm getting sixty a month and board, and so far I 've only seen the board." "I 'm not foolin', Jack. I Ve bit every blank dollar so often to make sure that I was n't dreamin', that my teeth are wo'n down like an old houn' dog's." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 285 I stopped short in the road and looked him over. He was undoubtedly in earnest and not crazy at least not crazier than usual. "Then, Major, salt it," I implored. "Bury it, tie it up in trust, buy an annuity, get yourself arrested and locked up, anything that '11 fix you so you can't go back to Wall Street for more," and I grabbed his arm as if he were about to bolt back to break the bank. "My deah Jack," the simple old fox answered. "I retired from business yesterday mo'nin' and invested my principal in bonds, a fo'm of wealth to which I have always been extremely partial. At the favourable prices prevailing owin' to the injudicious attacks of the President on vested interests, they will yield me a little mo' than ten thousand a year not much by the extravagant standards of the age, but enough fo' an old fellow of my simple tastes. As fo' goin' back fo' mo', only a blank business man would do that. One whose profession, like mine, suh, has necessitated a close study of the laws of chance, knows that to tempt Fo'tune again, after such a run of luck, would be to tempt her to administer the chastise ment that such unworthy hoggishness would deserve. I 've been waitin' twenty years fo' the blank luck to change, and now that it has changed I 'm goin'to play a certainty. The only certainty I 286 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL know of suh, is first mo'tgage bonds, with the interest payable semi-annually in gold at yo' bankers," and the Major parted with the last of his dignity in a whoop of joy. Then for ten minutes we fraternised all over the road, shaking hands, slapping each other on the back, and exchanging incoherent sentences beginning, "You told me the blank luck was due to change when we were " and, "To think, suh, that only a few weeks ago, in Baltimo', we were sufferin' fo' the bare " A long squabble over the cheque which I had turned back to the Major's account followed, but finally I made him see that I could n't take half his winnings when he had furnished the stake, the luck, and the wit to know that he had been cheated. My contention that, if the Governor and I were to be friends, I should start fair with him and not employ even a "justifiable stratagem " to win his good opinion, brought him grudgingly to my way of thinking. Then I persuaded him that in common decency I could n't leave the Bonsalls before the next morning, so we pushed on to the village, where the Major telephoned the Governor that it was all right, but to postpone the dinner for twenty-four hours and on no account to forget the terrapin. As it was still early and lessons were over for JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 287 the day, the Major decided to return to the Bonsalls with me. Half-way there we stepped aside to yield the road to a horseman who was cantering toward us on a hunter which the Major viewed with approving eyes. But, instead of keeping on, the man pulled up when he saw us, and sang out joyously: "Hullo, sporty boy Spur! Where did you come from ?" It was Owen Corliss, an old Harvard pal, whose family I had often heard the Bonsalls mention with mingled despair and reverence, for they had held their union cards in the Four Hundred for a generation. I was n't glad to meet Owen, but I answered cordially and sought to divert his attention from myself by introducing the Major. But he per sisted in being glad to see me. "Where you stopping?" he demanded. "At the Bonsalls," I admitted, and added by way of palliation, "but I 'm going back to town to-morrow." On occasion I can be something of a snob myself. "Oh," he commented politely, but expressively. Then: "I say, can't you cut out to-night and dine at our place; there 's an awfully jolly crowd staying with us ? And bring Major Jackson," he concluded hospitably. 288 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL I hesitated. It was a long time since I 'd had any fun that I had n't had to keep to myself, and the thought of an evening with a lot of jolly young people was more than a temptation; it was a fall. "We '11 be there," I answered, and Owen rode away with a farewell, " Bully! Dinner at eight." Mrs. Bonsall was out calling when we got back, so we went up to the school-room and, as the Major expressed a curiosity to see how the blank cards would run after his colossal luck of the past month, we started a friendly game of freeze-out. We had hardly picked up our first hands when that tiresome cub Clarence, whom I had thought safely out of the way for the afternoon, burst into the room. "Ho! Ho!" he exclaimed. "Caught in the act! Playin* poker! Gimme a stack." I nodded in answer to the question in the Major's eye, for the youth's father sometimes played with him of an evening. "What's the limit?" Clarence demanded as the Major pushed a stack toward him. "The ceiling," I answered, for we were, of course, playing "for fun." "And what are you calling the chips?" "Oh! call 'em anything you please. It does n't make any difference." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 289 "Well, let 's say a dollar apiece," and Clarence cut with a deftness that made the Major open his eyes. It was lucky, I thought as the game proceeded, that we were n't playing for real money. I held wretched hands, and, as the Major repeatedly observed, the game was a heaven-sent warning to him. For Clarence, little demon that he was, the devil's picture-cards seemed to run in any combination which he needed to beat us. Finally, both because the game was tiresome, now that we could n't talk freely, and because Clarence's impertinence was heating up the Major to the danger point, I made an excuse for stopping. Clarence assented readily and began to count his chips. "These call for eighty-three bones from the Major and fifty-six from you," he said as he finished. "Yes; you were very lucky," I replied pleasantly. "And now, if you '11 excuse us, we have a little business to talk over." "All right; but cash in first." There was a moment's stony silence while I looked Clarence in the eye, and saw his shriveled little soul there, though he tried to stare back unconcernedly. "Tut! tut! Master Clarence," the Major ex- 290 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL claimed. "You know very well, suh, that we were playin' fo' fun. I 'm not in the habit of gamblin' with little boys.'* "Yes; I see you play for fun when you lose," sneered Clarence. "You heard me make these chips a dollar apiece. Ain't that so, Spurlock ?" But he did n't look at me again. I was too ashamed for the boy to have any heart in denying it, so I only answered: "I did not understand it that way." But the Major had already taken out his pocket- book and handed eighty three dollars to Clarence. "Shall I pay him fo' you, too, Jack?" he asked, more cheerfully than the circumstances seemed to warrant. "No; I can't permit that." "But you can give me your I O U till to morrow," Clarence suggested. "Your wages are due then; though you should n't have played at all unless you could pay cash if you lost," he added virtuously. "Do it, Jack," the Major commanded grimly, and I handed the young pup an I O U for fifty- six dollars of my pitiful salary. "Well, so long," said Clarence defiantly, as he buttoned up the spoils. "Not so fast, suh," the Major demurred. "You have n't got all that 's comin* to you JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 291 yet," and, seizing the astounded youth, he laid him across his knees and spanked him lovingly, lingeringly and artistically, until he roared for mercy. "Now go back to the servants' hall where you belong, suh," he admonished. Once free, Clarence paused only long enough to shake his fist at us and to call back: "I '11 fix you, you damned old sharper; and you, too, Mister Jack Spurlock. You '11 be fired for this, you see if you ain't." "And I wanted to leave a nice impression!" I exclaimed ruefully. "Well, it 's taught me one lesson: I '11 never play poker for fun again as long as I live." There was small fear that Clarence would tell his mother about the game; he would have to invent some lie to get even. So when I saw the carriage roll up to the door a little later I went down to meet her confidently. The Major, like a brave warrior, never courted unneces sary danger, so he slipped out to a near-by summer- house to wait for me. I caught Mrs. Bonsall in the hall, and, as usual, began with a blunder. "Oh! Mrs. Bonsall!" I announced, "I'm going to dine with some friends to-night, and I may not be back until late." 292 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL There was an assurance in my manner that did n't just please my lady. "Who are these friends?" she demanded sharply. "You know I don't like to have any one out late." From her, "anyone" meant a servant. Even then I should have lied to her out of sheer goodness of heart, if I 'd thought, for I might have known that she would n't relish the idea of my dining at a house where she was n't received. But she seemed to be in such a hurry for an answer that she rattled me, and, rather than keep a lady waiting, I told her the truth. "With the Corlisses," and then I saw that I had done it. "What Corlisses ?" she demanded in an awful voice. "Our neighbours," I answered with a little secret gratification, I confess, now that the mis chief was done. "Owen Corliss is an old class mate of mine." "You can't go," she snapped. "I need you to fill a place at the table here." "I 'm afraid I '11 have to go," I answered, politely, but firmly. "You see, I 've already accepted." "Then unaccept." I still kept my temper, though I saw that, JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 293 quite regardless of the quality of Clarence's lie, I was n't going to leave that pleasant impression behind me. " I 'm sorry, but it 's quite im possible " " If you go out to-night you need n't come back.'* ''As you please," I answered with aggravating coolness. " I was planning to leave you to " " Pack your things and get out instantly. I '11 send a cheque for your wages to your room." "There 's only four dollars due," I informed her. "And you might hand that to the butler for me; he 's been very attentive. The balance belongs to Clarence." " So that 's where the poor child's spending money has been going to! You 've been borrow ing it of him, you rascal." "Not exactly," I laughed. "The little devil won it from me at poker," and I left her stuttering for vowels to fill out the dashes in her expletives. I was n't long about packing and getting one of the men to take my trunk out to the stable. As I followed it past the nursery door I saw Dorothy sitting there, scowling her dislike at me. On the instant I had a holy inspiration. Stepping inside I laid the unsuspecting brat over my knees, and gave her the first spanking she had ever had. And it was a sound one sixty dollars' worth. Then I politely restored her to her place on the floor, 294 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL and left her gathering breath for a howl which would properly proclaim the insult to her dignity. On the way to the stables I picked up the Major. A messenger had already brought his bag from the city, and we were soon settled in the little village hotel. There the Major skinned a hundred-dollar bill from his roll, and insisted on my taking it. "Just to give you confidence," he explained. "You look a little fagged, and money's a great tonic to the feelin's." "I will feel better for having it in my pocket," I admitted. "To tell the truth, Major, I 'm beginning to get discouraged. I seem to be an all-round frost. I came out here with the purest and holiest intentions, and look at my bum finish. I Ve eaten dirt for a month, and what do I make out of it ? Not even a mud pie ? How the deuce can I go to the Governor to-morrow and expect him to fondle me as his fair-haired boy, with this record behind me ?" "My deah Jack," the Major returned sooth ingly, "if you will be discreet and spare yo* father useless and painful details no suh! I am not counselin' you to deceive him, but simply to repress yo' passion fo' harrowin' his feelin's you will sho'tly find yo'self in touch with a bank account which will relieve you of all these so'did and ungentlemanly little worries." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 295 I made no answer, for like every real difference in life, ours was simply a difference in the point of view. What the Bonsalls regarded as enviable elegance, was vulgar ostentation to the Corlisses. The men whom the Major called the hell-hounds of the System on an empty stomach, were our great leaders of finance after he had eaten their grouse. And to me, with a borrowed hundred- dollar bill in my pocket, the steam of the flesh-pots smelled savory; but deep down I knew that, once I 'd laid on a little fat, I should not be content to wear a Wall Street ball and chain, even if it were of solid gold. CHAPTER XII IN WHICH THE PRODIGAL GOES HOME A PPARENTLY, suh," quoth the Major, JL\. as we limped up to the Corliss front door in the village hack, "this place was built fo* a home, and not fo' a blank roadhouse." It was a rambling old Colonial mansion, with a broad sweep of lawn down to the park of noble trees through which we had been driving. We caught glimpses of a charming old-fashioned flower garden at one side of the house, but in planting the place the owner's efforts had evi dently been directed only toward enhancing its natural beauties. No anachronistic trees or shrubs had been used; nothing stuck out from the rest and clamoured for attention; everything belonged. There was no make-up on the face of nature here no rouging and enamelling and blondining of the simple old lady until she looked like a Broadway chorus girl. There were no hectic beds of geraniums and cannas, no varicolored foliage plants, no "specimen" trees of strange shape and habit. There was no joshing and making ridiculous the honest Long Island land- 296 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 297 scape. There were no fussy, little, pot-bellied evergreens from the Orient, looking like squat heathen idols; no sheared and barbered spruces, reminding one of fortune-hunting Italian counts with pointed beards; no mincing, priggish little bushes, with their hair neatly cut and plastered down; no twisted and pathetic freaks, grown and exploited by heartless nurserymen for buyers with the souls of dime-museum keepers. A man's grounds are as good an index to his character as his house. When I pass a place where fine forest trees have been cut down to make room for parvenu plants, I know that the owner starves his poor old mother in an attic room; and when I see a lawn with knobby little ever greens and dinky little shrubs spotted all over it, and a bed of elephant's ears on one side of the drive and one of cannas on the other, I know that while the owner may have a heart of gold, he would wear tan shoes with a frock coat, and that his womenfolk are the kind who force fre quent changes in the fashions by trying to follow them. So I understood and sympathised with the Major when he intimated that there was no mistaking the Corliss place for Central Park West or a Dutch beer garden. When anyone entered the Bonsall palaee everything shrieked, "How expensive I am!" 298 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL One was hit squarely between the eyes in the hallway, and landed gasping and breathless among the gilded glories of the drawing-room. But in the Corliss house there was a mellowness and harmony of colour that satisfied; an air of ease and comfort that soothed. One simply felt that everything was right and let it go at that. Nothing in the house demanded attention; everything was worth it. We felt at home even before we had been announced and welcomed in the library by Owen and his father, a bon vivant with a bad liver, but withal a kindly old buck and a famous antiquarian in his chosen field of re search vintage wines. He and the Major fraternised at once and were soon deep in a learned discussion on the right way to mix a mint julep. From that the conversation natu rally passed to the old-fashioned whiskey-cocktail, and so movingly did the Major deplore its passing, and so eloquently did he expatiate on its merits, that when the butler brought the martinis, Mr. Corliss waved them away and asked the Major to prove his assertions. So three or four of us retired to a little den of Mr. Corliss' to witness the demonstration. "I know, suh," began the Major when the butler returned with the ingredients, "that many gentlemen whose opinion is entitled to respect JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 299 use rye in compoundin' this er ambrosial beverage, but fo' myself, I have never felt that a perfect result could be obtained except with Bou'bon, a feelin' which was shared, I may add, by the mo' discriminatin' members of the Pendennis Club of Louisville, and in such matters they were, I think we may safely concede, the final authority. There, suh," he concluded, handing Mr. Corliss his; "titillate yo' palate with that, and then tell me whether I have overstated the case. I shall bow to yo' decision. There is no appeal from Caesar, suh." The Major touched glasses with his smiling host. "Yo' health, suh, and the old state," he gave, and they bowed to each other. As he lifted his eyes the Major caught one of the younger men gulping down his cocktail. "Drink it slowly, suh," he admonished, raising a warning hand, "and show proper respect fo' age. That Bou'bon, suh, was a contemporary of the late lamented Henry Clay." "Isn't he an old dear?" I heard a familiar voice exclaim from the doorway behind me, and turning, I looked into the eyes of Anita Grey. "Anita!" I gasped. "Dee-lighted!" she laughed back, sticking out her tongue in imitation of that sickening Teddy-bear. 300 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "What in the world are you doing here?" I demanded, ignoring the unconventional form of her greeting. Some memories are too painful. Most of mine are. "Visiting, of course," she answered. "I 'm getting to be a professional visitor nowadays." And right there our conversation was cut short by Mr. Corliss, who presented the Major to Anita and told him to take her in to dinner. The others had all come into the library by this time, and I drew a stunning girl, but she gave me up after the first five minutes. For the sight of the Major getting acquainted with Anita had thrown me into an agony of apprehension. From my place across the table I could not catch what they were saying, but by watching their faces I could follow the course of their conversation and see how it was progressing from polite talk about country life to more personal topics. Then the Major told a story some awful remi niscence of our life together, I was sure and Anita began to question him eagerly. All this time I had been vainly endeavouring to catch the Major's eye, but Anita looked up suddenly and I caught hers, just when my face was con torted in a hideous warning to the Major to shut up. Anita smiled back pleasantly, made some comment which caused the Major to grin, and JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 301 then he told a new one on me which was apparently the best yet. All through dinner their heads kept getting closer and closer how I wished that I could bump them together and their voices lower and lower, until by the time coffee was served they were almost whispering. "Would she never pump him dry?" I kept asking myself fiercely. "Could n't the old fool see that she was working him like creamery butter ? Had he no decent reserves, were there no incidents in our career that he held too sacred for the casual and curious ear ? Apparently not. He gave up like a trained dog. He dug up the buried bones of my awful past, and with each pat on the head scratched deeper in his memory. I had never seen the Major with a pretty woman before, but I might have known that what no man could take from him by force, any pretty woman could get for a smile. Beside him, Samson after his hair-cut was adamant with the girls. How I blamed myself for having introduced him to Owen Corliss! How I hoped that he would choke, or at least glance at me again, that I might strike him dumb with one awful look of scorn and contempt. Yet when I did finally catch his eye as the women left us, he did n't wither, or droop even only regarded me with a benevo- 3 02 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL lent smile, quite as if he expected me to feel flattered at having proved so prolific a source of humorous anecdote. On the way to the drawing-room I could n't reproach him, because he went out arm in arm with Mr. Corliss. So I brought up the rear, my bearing in pitiful contrast to what I had planned it should be. For going out to dinner I had decided that I should at least win Anita's respect by putting up a dignified, reserved front, and then her sympathy perhaps, by hinting that my life, though dark and stormy, had been one of manly and not altogether unsuccessful effort to make a place for myself in the great world. And now the Major had made me look like the Katzen jammer kids in the eyes of the only person whom I cared to have take me seriously. Following this unpleasant line of thought I detached myself from the other men, and slunk across the library to an open French window which gave on the terrace. As I stood there looking out at the blackness, a white arm reached in and gently pulled me outside. I did n't struggle, for before I had slunk over to the window, I had caught sight of a familiar figure disappearing through it. I was determined that the Major should n't get away with all the honours for weakness if I could prevent it. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 303 For a moment I stood beside Anita in the light from the window, while she looked at me with serious eyes in which I saw something that made my heart beat quicker. Then, side by side, we stepped out on the lawn. Anita broke the silence. "Tell me about it, Jack," she began softly; "tell me why you left?" "I rather fancy the Major has done that already," I replied in a voice which, despite my efforts, was just a little aggressive. But Anita paid no attention to that. "He told me why you 'd left your father," she con tinued, "but I 'd known that all along. What he could n't tell me was why you 'd left me. And he was polite enough to say that he could n't understand it, either." "You knew that all along!" I echoed. "You knew it when you broke your engagement with Brooke Churchill and that night at Mrs. Hamilton's when you when you - "When I tried to propose to you," Anita said, completing the embarrassing sentence. "Yes, I knew it then." "And still you were willing - "Yes." Then I woke up to the fact that I was holding Anita's hand, that I had been holding it ever since I had stepped through the French window. 3 o 4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL Some way, it seemed as if it would look rude and pointed if I released it just then, even though I was determined to prove myself a lineal descend ant of the early Christian martyrs before the evening was over, so I kept right on holding it. The evening had only just begun. I wonder whether those young Romeos in novels really do make love so smoothly and talk in such poetic and well-rounded sentences to the heroine, or whether the average love-scene is n't purely fiction, a symbol, standing for an ideal result that no one ever gets, except, perhaps, the fellow who is n't in earnest. It 's awfully easy to be glib and gabby when one's flirting, but when I really feel deeply I can't find many words. And when it 's Anita that I 'm feeling deeply about, I choke on my Adam's apple and stumble over my own feet. So I blurted it all out in a few awkward sentences. "I love you, Anita. I always shall love you I don't need to tell you that " "No; but please do, Jack. I like to hear it." " Do you mean that, Anita ? Some way, I never believed that you could love me; I can't quite believe it yet." "But I do dearly, Jack," Anita returned, pressing my hand by way of emphasis. " Don't, Anita you won't understand," I JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 305 protested. "I'm no good at anything; I'm a failure at everything. It 's true I 'm making up with the Governor, and I suppose he 'd allow ance me and make it possible for us to marry. But I don't want even you on those terms. I simply must fight it out." "Of course you must, Jack, but we '11 fight it out together." "No, no," I dissented vehemently. "That would n't be decent of me or fair to you," and then I put my arm around Anita's waist and drew her to me in an agony of renunciation. A minute later, or perhaps it was two I don't remember Anita said: "Now, Jack, be sensible for a minute and listen to me. You know when father died it was dear of you to send me those violets when you were so poor well, he did n't leave a million only enough to give me about twelve hundred a year. And you know what twelve hundred a year means among these people. Of course, I can spend half my time living in luxury on my friends, and the other half scrimping along on my twelve hundred. If I were a little older and all this had become my fixed idea of happiness, as it would, I suppose, some day, I 'd probably swallow the insults with the wine, and stoop to all the petty meannesses and make shifts of a life of poverty in palaces." 306 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Or marry Brooke Churchill," I suggested, "and have a palace of your own." "Or marry Brooke Churchill, whom I don't love," assented Anita, "or you, whom I do. I prefer to marry you, Jack. I'd rather make- believe a palace than make-believe love." This was such dangerous ground that to keep firm in my resolution I had to take Anita in my arms and renounce her again. "Now, dear," she continued, when the inter ruption was over, "we must cut New York and all its works, and go to some place where life is n't so complex " "And so expensive," I added. "And where happiness is n't things you buy, but things you do. You must find such a place, Jack, and take me there." "I have found such a place," I answered, "and I 'm going there to-morrow, but it would n't be right to take you. You 've heard me speak of Uncle Bill, who won't conform and who lives in his own sweet way, to the bitter disgust of the Governor. He owns a newspaper in Cafion City, a town of eight or ten thousand at the foot of the Continental Divide in Colorado, and runs a mountain ranch one of those natural parks back in the range. Well, I wrote him last week for a job on his paper, and I got it this morning JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 307 at twenty dollars a week. It 's a start, but it 's only the beginning of a long pull. It 's better for you to be unhappy for a little while now, than for me to take you to a frontier town, away from everything and everybody you Ve known and liked, and perhaps condemn you to a lifetime of unhappiness." " I Ve always loved Colorado and the moun tains," Anita commented irrelevantly, "and as for ranch life, I know of nothing more delightful. Twenty and twenty-five make forty-five a week. I shall be very, very economical, Jack oh! I Ve been learning too! And we shall make out famously." We were back near the house now, and I hur ried toward it, for I felt that I was weakening. On the terrace I turned to say the final word to Anita. "Don't tempt me any more, Anita," I pleaded. "You know how rotten weak I am," and I kissed her good-bye forever some ten or twenty times. Apparently she did n't understand that it was good-bye, for she kept right on, and, of course, I could n't rush away while she was talking with out seeming awfully rude. "You can 't seem to understand, Jack, that I want to start poor. People who start rich don't seem to stay married. There 's something 3 o8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL in fighting it out together that makes love last, and I don't want anything, Jack, for which I 've got to give even the least bit of your love." " It 's bully of you, Anita, to feel that way, but I can't let you do it," I protested. Anita stamped her foot. " I did n't know you could be so obstinate, Jack Spurlock," she cried and disappeared through the window. I followed more slowly and saw her, with cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling, carrying on an animated conversation with the Major. Finally, after nodding reassuringly, the old fellow walked across to me. "Step outside a minute, Jack," he began; "I want to have a little serious conversation with you." "You bet I will," I answered, delighted at this opportunity to quarrel with some one. " What the devil do you mean by giving up your immortal soul and all my personal affairs to Anita?" "My deah boy," the Major returned mildly, as we began to walk the terrace, " I really could n't add anything of impo'tance to the young lady's info'mation. She knows you like the Old Testa ment, suh, and she 's had a tola'bly good religious trainin' of the kind we used to get befo' a frivolous and light-minded generation abolished Hell. Of cou'se she was anxious to know just what you had been doin', and considerin' the tender natchah JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 309 of yo' relations with her, suh, I saw no harm in impartin' to her some of the mo* amusin* incidents - "Yes, I saw you giving me the laugh," I inter rupted bitterly. "But let that go now; I want to get away from here quick, before I make a bigger ass of myself than I have already." "That, suh, would be layin' out fo* yo'self the labours of Hercules," the Major returned. "What do you mean by that?" I demanded, angry in earnest now. "What do I mean by that, suh F What do I mean by that?" the Major roared. "I mean, suh, that you are a blank fool; that any man who could even entertain the thought of givin* up the blankest, beautifullest creature on earth, has no dashed heart; that any man who could let cold, calculating so'did, mercenary consider ations of how he is goin' to make a livin' interfere with his callin' that blank angel his own is a dashed coward. That 's what I mean, suh, and I repeat it." Instead of getting angrier at the Major, the knowledge that there was one human being who approved of my marrying Anita on twenty a week gave me my first glimmer of hope. "But, Major," I protested, seeking further encouragement, in a low, sneaking way, "you 3 io JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL must realise that as I am situated it would be downright dishonourable of me to marry Anita." "You have queer ideas of honour, suh," the Major snorted. "Do you call it honourable, might I inquire, to win the heart of a trustin', confidin' girl with yo' blank Machiavellian arts and insinuatin' ways, and then to throw her over; do you consider it honourable to discuss marriage with her don't you dare deny it, suh and then to jilt her on the very steps of the altar; is it a part of yo' peculiar code, suh, to lure a young girl out on to a dark lawn, compromisin' her in the eyes of her childhood's friends, and then to spurn her with a heartless laugh ? Dash it all, Jack, I can't stand fo' such treatment of her! It 's unmanly; it 's inhuman; it 's it 's monstrous, suh!" "Do you mean to threaten, Major?" I de manded in a tone that I tried to make very fierce. "No, no, Jack," the Major protested, wilting at once. "Of cou'se I appreciate that you are actuated by the highest and most unselfish motives " "You doggoned old fool," I interrupted, feel ing inexpressibly annoyed; "can't you see I want to be threatened?" The Major gripped both my hands. "You young rascal!" he bellowed delightedly. "You JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 311 come with me or I '11 break every blank bone in yo' body." And he dragged me off to search for Anita. She saw us coming and knew from the look on my face that I was coming for her. Some girls would have played coy, but Anita was n't that sort. She came to meet me, and, as the Major discreetly fell to the rear, she gave me both hands, and with them herself. "I can make good, Anita, with you to help," I said. "You '11 make good, anyway," she answered. " But I want to be a part of it." "Soon?" I insinuated. "If you're going to be a poor man's wife you ought to get away from all this demoralising luxury at once ? Don't keep me waiting, Anita." "You 've been patient so long, Jack," she answered seriously, "that this sudden impatience sounds a little stagey. You must wait" and she laughed as she saw my face fall "until to-morrow afternoon." And then she ran away before I could detain her, kissing her hand and calling back that she should be frightfully busy in her room for the rest of the evening. As there was to be no more Anita, the evening was over so far as I was concerned, and I suggested 312 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL to the Major the propriety of saying good night and of going back to the hotel, but the old fellow chuckled and answered: "We 're not goin' back to-night, Jack; we 're goin' to stay right here. When Mr. Corliss heard that we had left the Bonsalls he sent his man to the hotel fo' our baggage. And owin' to the necessity of securin' his cooperation if we're to get an early start in the mo'nin', I think I 'd better announce yo* engagement to him," which he promptly did. Mr. Corliss was delighted with the news. "God bless my soul, Major!" he exclaimed. " I 've been waiting a year for an occasion worthy of the last of the '74. We '11 have it up at once and drink the young folks' health." Mr. Corliss routed out the spooners from their corners, drove the bridge players from their table, and sent for Anita. Then the Major, at his host's request, stood up, glass in hand, to tell what it was all about. Some way Anita and I had come together and had slipped into the background, where we could touch hands for a minute. "Owin' to the unfo'tunate fact that I am a er er bachelor," the Major began, thrust ing his unoccupied hand in his shirt bosom, "I have never been blessed with er er off spring." Loud cries of "Hear! Hear!" from JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 313 Mr. Corliss. "But by a singular piece of good fo'tune I have been associated in my business undertaking durin' the past year with one fo* whom I have come to cherish all the feelin's of a father. That Mr. Spurlock has had the good taste to fall in love with my ward, Miss Grey, and the good fo'tune to find that his - er er sentiments are not distasteful to her, is a sou'ce of great pleasure to an old fellow who has reached that time of life when we find our greatest happi ness in the happiness of others. I give you the health of rny ward, Miss Grey, and of Mr. Spurlock." There was n't a wet eye or a full glass at the end of this speech. Then, in the momentary silence that followed the drinking of the toast, we heard Owen Corliss exclaim in a hoarse, stage whisper: "His ward! Would n't that sting you ? And father introduced them four hours ago. I bet he used to propose on sight." "And shoot, too," Anita added significantly, and she set the seal of her approval on the new relationship by kissing the Major good night and running back to her packing, for we were to make an early start next morning. As soon as she was safely upstairs the Major cleared his throat, preparatory to firing his second sensation at the company. 3 i4 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "It was very careless of me/* he began when he had secured the attention of everybody, "but I clean fo'got to announce that the er hyme neal knot will be tied to-morrow afternoon at two, and that my ward wishes me to invite you all to the ceremony at St. Aurea's and to the weddin' breakfast at Sherry's. This may, I know, seem a little er impetuous," he explained, in an swer to the murmur of astonishment, " but business matters of great impo'tance call Mr. Spurlock West to-morrow night, and he has a distaste, amountin' to a er mania almost, fo' travellin' alone! As it is not possible fo' me to get away just now, I fear that my ward will have " The rest was drowned in a shout of laughter. The women crowded around me, protesting that it was all too perfectly lovely, and thinking, no doubt, that it was all too perfectly crazy. I shared both beliefs. What they would have thought if they had known the true inwardness of affairs that I was marrying on a weekly salary of small change, such as people hold out to drop in the baby's bank is too involved a sub ject for speculation even. But, of course, they believed that I was still the young prince, privi leged to play the fool, and able to pay alimony regularly when I got ready to settle down. I firmly refused to figure in any farewell bach- JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 315 elor proceedings, though old Mr. Corliss was purple with pleasure at having so plausible a pretext for getting comfortably jingled. But in my time I had seen so many fellows stop on the way from a Turkish bath to call at the altar for their brides that I had no stomach for the game. I managed to get away and to take the Major with me, though rather against his will, on the plea that there were still some important details to be settled. But I really wanted a chance to ask him what he meant by inviting all those people to a church wedding and a breakfast at Sherry's. And once we were in our room I lost no time in doing it. "That, suh, is none of yo' business," the Major answered, "but I don't mind tellin' you. It's because I don't propose that my ward shall be married befo' a magistrate like a blank parlour maid. Somethin', suh, is due to her birth and breedin'!" " But think of the expense of all this, Major," I protested. "You know I - "I will think of it in due time, suh, when the bills come in. But what the deuce do you mean by thinkin' of it ? What do you mean by thinkin' of anything except yo' affianced bride ? Dash it all, Jack, this perpetual penny-shavin' and dollar- hoardin' is the only thing I don't like about you. 3 i6 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL You must overcome it, suh, if you 're ever goin* to get on in the world. The only thing you 've got to do with this weddin' is to answer yes when you 're spoken to and to fee the clergyman." " But I can't even fee him until after I 've touched the Governor," I explained, "unless I do it with the hundred you lent me. And father 's likely to go right up in the air when I begin to talk the woolly West and this wild wedding to him." "I think, suh, I can make him understand that my ward has done him an honour in consentin' to an alliance with a member of his family," the Major returned, bridling a little. " It is scarcely necessary fo' me to info'm you, suh, that the best and the oldest blood in the state flows in the veins of our er the Greys. It may be mo' difficult to make Mr. Spurlock see that yo' Western plans deserve the same measure of approbation. But whatever he says, Jack, don't, I implo' you, do anythin' to excite him. Leave it all to me. Tact and diplomacy will coax along the stubbo'n- nest mule when twistin' his tail won't budge him." I promised, and we went to bed. The Major, in lieu of prayers probably, had a habit of spend ing the first few minutes after the lights were out in moral and philosophical reflections, based on JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 317 the occurrences of the day, and then of imparting his conclusions to me. To-night was no exception. "I reckon you were right, Jack, in cuttin' out that bachelor blowout, though it did seem just a little ungracious to yo' host. It might have re sulted in a regrettable over-stimulation of some of the younger men, fo' this blank genera tion don't seem to hold its liquor right you noticed how that young fellow was startin' in to guzzle his cocktail ? And he swilled that seventy- fo' champagne like a blank shoat all stomach and no palate." "Then you 've come around to my way of think ing," I commented; "and you don't really believe that it 's good business for a young man to drink." " I did n't say that, Jack," the Major returned cautiously, " but I will say that I don't believe it 's good business fo' a young man to get drunk. A fellow has to have a mighty level head to play around the edges of hell without fallin' in," and the Major gave a prodigious yawn, ending in a chuckle. " I 've met some mighty fine people here to-night, what the niggers used to call real quality folks, but I don't know what to make of some of the women," he went on. "You know that Miss Moore ? a regular young Juno, suh. Well, dash it all, if she did n't confide to me that her father haci promised her ten thousand 3i8 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL dollars if she would n't smoke until she was twenty-one. Said it would stunt her growth! What do you think of that, suh?" " I don't think, so long as I don't have to marry her," I yawned. "I 'm a young man of one idea, and just now that happens to be Anita. Thank the Lord she does n't smoke, for my salary would be just about cigarette money for her," and I turned over and pretended to go to sleep. Mr. Corliss broke the regular habits of a life time by getting up before nine next morning and seeing us off in one of his motors. Our baggage was already on the way to New York in charge of his men. " I '11 be waiting at the church," the old fellow called out jovially as we sputtered away from his door, and then we settled back, Anita between the Major and me, for the run through the sharp morning air. Anita and I were n't very talky, for with the Major there beside us we could n't talk about the only thing in the world worth mentioning, but she gave me some silent treatments with her eyes that were mighty comforting. I don't believe that we 'd have said much even if we 'd been alone. The Major, too, during the first part of the ride, was silent. His face reflected a judicious mixture of dignity and joy, which told me that he was alternately thinking over the coming battle with JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 319 the Governor and his part in the wedding cere mony. Finally, however, he seemed to have conned over his roles in both affairs to his satis faction, and then, mile by mile, his spirits mounted until they culminated in a burst of melancholy song: Oh! they buried her down in Geo'gia, Darlin' Nellie that I loved so true, And the cypress weeps over her tombstone, And the "Dash it all, Jack! I reckon you may be right about quittin' New York," he broke off suddenly. " It 's as bad to be rich there as it is to be po'. The only people who get any fun out of livin' in the blank town are those who have just enough so that they can pity the po' and envy the rich/' "Then you'd better leave it, Major," I an swered, voicing a thought which had been in my mind all along, "and follow us out to God's country." "That's worth considering suh," the Major returned enthusiastically. "I have always had a great partiality fo' the West; a strange, and, as I look at it now, a prophetic conviction that I should end my days there. While the interests of the trottin' ho'se have always had a peculiar hold on my affections, we seldom find it possible to marry our first sweethearts, and it would be 320 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL a not ignoble ambition to improve the breed of the American steer. Much has been done, suh, toward sho'tenin' the ho'ns of that useful animal. I firmly believe that by careful selection and breedin' the blank ho'ns can be eliminated altogether!'* " I should n't be surprised, Major," I returned judicially, though I did n't know just why any one should want to eliminate the blank horns. "It would be worth trying, anyway." "Worth tryin', suh! The man who can accom plish that will be a benefactor of the race whom comin' generations will delight to honah. Jack, this all sounds mighty good to me. There is somethin' about the freedom and dignity of ranch life which appeals to me powerfully. I have often dreamed, suh, of sittin' under my own vine and fig tree, watchin' the cattle on a thousand hills fattenin* themselves fo' my pleasure and profit. And there 's somethin' in the Western climate which breeds men. They grow tall at that alti tude, and have big hearts. The mountains teach them to hate the little, mean, triflin' things. They tell the truth out there, suh, fo' the lie means a blow. And when a man has to fight when he 's called a liar, he's mighty careful about how he lies. But if one man calls another. a liar in this blank town, what happens? Nothin', suh! He JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 321 simply says, 'You're another/ and by Geo'ge, suh! they're both satisfied, because it's true." In such fashion did the Major beguile the journey until we had dropped Anita, to meet her again at the church door, and had dismissed the car in front of the Governor's building. There was quite a craning of necks and whisper ing among the clerks when we entered the office, but it stopped suddenly when the Major inquired loudly of Horton, the Governor's secretary, whether he was "runnin' a blank rubberneck wagon." He left me in the outer room saying: "I reckon I 'd better go in first and prepare yo' father," a proposition to which I assented readily enough, for I felt that I needed a little preparing myself. The Major returned in a minute and whispered: "Come along, Jack, though I fear .we have hit on a singularly unfo'tunate day. From the fluency with which yo' father 's cussin' the market, it looks as if you might have come home to a skinned bull, instead of a fatted calf." I need n't have been afraid. The great scene for which I had been steeling myself began as tamely as the opening of a Sunday School, though not with prayer. Whatever the object of the Governor's wrath, he lacked that versatility in anger which would have enabled him to shift it to me. He was standing at the ticker when I 322 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL entered the room, cussing to himself with a mo notonous repetition of epithet. As I had once pointed out to him, he should n't have sworn, for he lacked that gift of improvisation which alone can justify the use of strong language. He dropped the tape when he saw me, took my hand, and, in a voice which he vainly tried to make less of a growl, told me to sit down. "I 'm glad to see you Jack, but I can't talk to you but a minute now, for I 'm up to my ears in work to-day; you'd better take the Major to the house and we '11 all dine together to-night." I was about to reply that I had business on hand which would n't wait, when the Major exploded : "We're not goin' to do anything of the so't. You go right on with yo' cussin,' suh, and Jack and I will sit down here until you need a little breathin' spell. Then we '11 talk to you. Jack has some things to say that won't hold over till evenin'." The Governor looked annoyed, and seemed to be on the point of ordering us out, but he thought better of it. There appeared to be some curious bond of sympathy, and of affection even, between him and the Major, which was utterly inexplicable on any rational grounds. Their friendship was apparently based on one of those attractions of JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 323 opposites which makes people exclaim: "What does she see in him ?" Finally, the Governor reluctantly surrendered the tape and came over to us. " I don't suppose there 's any particular use in following the details of this damned robbery any further," he growled. "Let's hear about your business, Jack." "What have they been doin' to you, Spurlock ?" the Major inquired genially. " Yo' face is so long and yo' manner so sho't that I judge the blank market has whip-sawed you." " I 've been held up," the Governor growled fiercely. "They've taken away the railroad to which I Ve given my life's blood for the last ten years the railroad that I've built up from noth ing into a great system. That 's what the damned scoundrels have done, Major, but I '11 make them sweat for it yet. I '11 teach them to trespass on my side of the fence if it takes the last dollar I 've got." And the Governor quivered with honest indignation. I don't know much about the railroad business, but I had received the impression from the news papers that it was the railroad, and not the Gov ernor, which had given up its life's blood as a consequence of their association. I remembered that whenever the press was short of a financial 324 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL scandal it told how he had bought I. &. P. for nothing, had issued the whole fifty-seven varieties of railroad securities against the pur chase price, and had declared a 10 per cent, semi annual deficit ever since. But that 's a detail. Apparently he had lost this valuable nothing and felt sore about it. "You don't mean to tell me that you've lost control of Illinois and Pacific?" the Major inquired incredulously. "That would be a hellish piece of business, suh." " That 's what I do mean it 's been stolen by that Bonsall bunch of high-binders." "But how could that happen, suh, when you own the controllin* interest ?" the Major persisted. "Owned," the Governor corrected bitterly. " There 's no harm in telling you the story now, for the papers will have it to-morrow. I saw this panic coming and foolishly let go a good deal of my stock enough to lose control, in fact expecting to make a little turn and pick it up lower. Then, when things got pretty well down, I picked up a big line of Chicago and Seattle, Bonsall's road, before I tried to get back my Illinois and Pacific. As you know, C. & S. is a much better dividend payer, and it was bound to respond on the upward movement before I. & P. It never occurred to me that that unscrupulous JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 325 Bonsall would dare to cut in behind me and steal my own road. But he did, as I 've found out since I tried to get back my stock. The minute I went into the market for it, I. & P. jumped like a jack rabbit, while C. & S. has only gone up a few points." Someway this business that the Governor was talking about had a familiar ring and then I remembered. I had heard scraps of conversation about this very deal while I was at the Bonsalls, without understanding at the time what it all meant. I had n't even connected I. & P. with the Governor. "Why!" I exclaimed, speaking as usual without thinking, "that must have been what they were always talking over at the Bonsalls!" The Governor rounded on me with a jump like a polo pony: "At the Bonsalls, eh! You've been at the Bonsalls have you ? Siding with the enemies of your own father again ?" I stifled the hot answer that came to my lips, and before I could give a tactful one the Major replied for me: "Yes, suh, earnin' an honest livin' there, after his own father had turned him from his do'." I was too excited by an idea which had just come to me to care a rap now for either the Governor's reproaches or the Major's heroics, so instead of supplementing his explanation, I burst out: 326 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Why, Governor! I believe that the Bonsalls have been up to the same game as you have. I know that they sold a lot of their C. & S. while they were buying your I. & P., expecting to get it back lower. They only hold control of C. & S. now through the Antrim estate stock, unless they Ve taken back the rest of their own stock during the last week, but the Antrim people are friendly to them. If you could buy that Antrim stock and add it to what you Ve got, you 'd simply have swapped railroads, and have a bang up dividend-paying system, instead of a bum jerk water one." It was as if some one had handed the Governor a ticket for a fourth-row seat on the aisle in heaven. Without a word he reached for the telephone and called up his man on the floor. "Give them as much of our I. & P. as they want," he ordered. "Buy all the C. & S. you can get without running the price up too fast yes, that 's what I said. All you can buy. Round up your men and get busy." "Jack," he said, turning to me as he dropped the receiver. "You 're not such a damn fool as I thought." "Thank you, sir," I answered modestly. "I could have given you first hand information about that long ago." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 327 "And you even seem to have some natural talent for high finance," he continued. "You don't call that high finance, do you?" I asked. "There's more high finance than that in a poker game and more honour," I added, but that last was to myself. "That 's his blank pose, suh," the Major broke in. " Pretendin* all the time that he does n't know anythin* about business. But he can't deceive me any mo*. He 's shrewd, Spurlock, as I Ve been tellin* you all along; and he simply has a genius fo' finance." The Governor reached for his hat. "I 'm going to get the right man after that Antrim stock. They Ve been hit in thj panic, and a good price will buy it, if they think it 's going to interests that are friendly to Bonsall. Oh, I '11 see that it gets into friendly hands ! Gad ! but Bonsall shall sweat for this. You stay right here till I get back, Jack. I *m not going to forget this." " And I '11 walk down the street with you," the Major ventured. Then, in an aside to me: "You wait here and I '11 break it to him about yo' marriage. This is the psychological moment," and he followed the Governor. They were back in an hour, the Major's face graver and the Governor's sterner than I had hoped to see them. My heart sank again. 328 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "I Ve got that stock, Jack, where I can take it over when I need it," the Governor began. "And I 'm going to teach that dog Bonsall to keep his hands off my property. But not a word of this outside, understand ?" "I understand," I nodded. "And now about my own affairs. The Major has told you that I am planning to get married ?" "Whether I approve or not ?" and there was a little growl in the Governor's voice. "I should like to get married with your approval," I returned. " But you '11 do it anyway, you mean." "That 's about it," I admitted. "What on?" the Governor demanded. "On me?" "No, sir," I returned, a little sharply "I want nothing of you but your presence at the ceremony and your good wishes." "What is this salary that Bill's going to give you ?" "Twenty dollars a week," I answered, blushing in spite of myself. "It has been done; it can be done again, I suppose, on twenty a week, but I should n't have picked you as a likely subject for the experiment," the Governor exploded. "It's all damfoolishness. You '11 be back home whimpering for help in sixty days." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 329 " If you feel that way about it, father, there 's nothing more to be said," and I stood up. " But I am going to marry Anita at two and leave for the West on the night express. I did want to part friends with you." "I said this was all damfoolishness, and I repeat it," the Governor roared, standing up, too. " But hang it all, Jack, I 'm proud of you for it. You bet I 'm going to the wedding, and I 'm going to have the sweetest girl in New York for my daughter-in-law. Getting you married to her is like tying you up in trust. Now you run right along to Anita and draw what you want from the cashier on the way out; I won't holler if you do act a little hoggish. Horton was told to honour your drafts six months ago." "You don't know what it means to me, father - not the money, but to feel that we 're friends again," was all that I could find to say. "The wedding's at two sharp, at St. Aurea's." "Make it three-thirty," the Governor replied. "I 've got to keep in touch with the market till the close." "It can't be done," I returned. "Anita has set the hour at two." "It must be done," the Governor returned. Another split seemed imminent, but the Major jumped in between us with a little of that 330 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL diplomacy which he had talked about the night before. " By Geo'ge, Spurlock ! I 'm ashamed of you ! " he fairly yelled, shaking his cane at the Governor. "Can't you stop this blank chase fo' the dirty dollar long enough to see yo' own flesh and blood married ? Are you goin' to keep the blankest, loveliest woman in New York waitin' at the altar while you grab a little mo' filthy lucre ? Why, dash it all, man, I would n't let myself act the hog like that fo' yo' whole blank railroad." The Governor never blinked during this tirade, but when the Major was through he turned to me and said gruffly: "I '11 be there at two, Jack." That was as near as he could come to apologising. I did stop at the cashier's, and drew a little of the Governor's tainted money. Then I turned to the Major, who had followed me out, and observed : "A little more diplomacy like that last, Major, and you '11 make me an outcast for life." The Major smiled. "My deah Jack," he replied, "have n't you learned yet that the way to handle yo' father is to beat him with yo' bare fists, and then to kick him when he 's down ?" and he started off to arrange matters at the church. Smart marriages may be made in Newport or in Europe, but they must be celebrated in St. Aurea's. JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 331 When I reached the church, I found that the magic of the Governor's money had set a dozen florists to work, and so we had the flowers and the music and everything that goes with a big wedding, except the curious crowd in the church and the indecent one in the street. Owen Corliss acted as best man, the Major gave the bride away, managing to convey the impression that he was handing over a princess of the royal blood to a base-born churl, and my old friend, the rector of St. Aurea's, read the service in that rich, unctuous voice with which he always blessed a union of millions. I could n't help thinking how horrified he would have been if he 'd known that he was wasting those chest notes on paupers. The breakfast at Sherry's was a merry affair. The Governor kissed the bride and told her that a year of roughing it in the West would n't hurt either of us, but that he expected us back at the end of that time to take our proper place in the world. Then he handed her ten thousand dollars with which to furnish our cabin in the wilderness. The Major, faithful to the last, accompanied us to the station to see us off. There we found the Governor's private car attached to the train to take me to my twenty-dollar job, and the coloured porter, an old friend of mine, grinning a welcome. 332 JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL "Yo* father and I, Jack," began the Major, as he settled us on board, "are plannin* to make a little inspection tour of his new system next month, and we shall stop off fo' a visit in Canon City. If, suh, the amazin' account of the resources of Colorado which I find in this pamphlet is accurate," and he tapped a railroad folder in his hand, " I think I shall look around preliminary to settlin' down there." Just then the brakeman shouted the warning "All aboard," and our good-byes began. "Major," I said, as he dropped to the platform after a last " God bless you !" " I Ve discovered the Big Idea!" The Major's face lit up with the fine old enthu siasm. "What is it, Jack ?" he shouted excitedly. "Get a job and work like the devil," I yelled back, and the old fellow shook his stick at me. Inside Anita was waiting for me. " Well, dear," I said, sitting down beside her, "between the Governor's cheque and this private car they 've rather managed to turn our little problem play into a comic opera." "But you won't let them, Jack, will you ?" she asked earnestly, taking my hand. "Not if you can be happy out there," I answered. "Happiness does n't depend on longitude, but on ourselves, dear." JACK SPURLOCK PRODIGAL 333 "Then we '11 be happy." A long silence. Then: "I like the Major enormously, Jack; he's a perfect old love. But are you quite sure, dear, that he has a good influence on you?" I laughed a horrid laugh, Anita said. For the first time I realised that I was a married man. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAP 000007813 9