CHAPTER XIX

"PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE"

While Judith Blanchard, as if defying fate, held her head higher than before, there grew on one of our characters, namely Jim Wayne, the habit of looking at the ground. Jim was one of those who, having a weak little conscience, cannot be wicked with an air.

And yet Mrs. Harmon, if she saw any change in him, thought it was for the better. Into her eyes, at least, he looked freely; his glance was more ardent, and only when she spoke of Beth did he glower and look away. In their conversations, therefore, Beth was no longer mentioned. Nor did he ever speak to Beth of his intimacy with Mrs. Harmon.

Thus Beth was surprised one day when, meeting Mrs. Wayne, the elder lady asked: "Wasn't it pleasant to see Jim last night?"

"Jim?" asked Beth. "Was he in town?"

"He came to the house for just one minute. I supposed he was hurrying to see you. Ah, Beth, we mothers!" And Mrs. Wayne sighed.

"But he didn't come to see me," said Beth. "It must have been business that brought him. I'll ask George."

Mather said he had seen Jim, but only by accident, when, returning from the theater, Wayne had passed him, apparently hurrying for the late train.

"In town all the evening and didn't come to see me?" thought Beth. The idea troubled her so much that Mather perceived it.

Yet no outsider understood the situation quite so clearly as Ellis, who had been before Jim at the Harmons' that evening, and left soon after he came. "I'm going to the Blanchards'," he said. "Shall I tell them to expect you, Mr. Wayne?"

Jim was so unskilled in finesse that he said he was going to take the early train. Ellis smiled.

"You shan't tease him!" declared Mrs. Harmon, putting her hand on Jim's sleeve. At which childishness the smile on Ellis's face became broad, and he went away. Returning after a couple of hours, he was in time to see Jim leave the house hastily, on his way to the station. A woman's silhouette showed on the glass of the vestibule door, and Ellis tried a trick. He ran quickly up the steps and knocked on the door. It was opened immediately.

"Back again?" asked Mrs. Harmon eagerly. "Oh, it's only you, Stephen!"

"Only me," and he turned to go, but she seized him.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded, and then not waiting for an answer asked: "You didn't tell the Blanchards he was here?"

"Not I," he replied. "Lydia, why do you hold me so?"

"Why did you startle me so?" she retorted. "But go along with you!" So he went, having by his manoeuver found out enough.

It was not wholly interest in his house, therefore, which took Ellis to Chebasset before many days. He went to the office of the mill, and as he stood before the chimney and looked up at it he mused that, metaphorically speaking, it would not take much prying at its foundations to make it fall: Wayne was a weak prop to such a structure. He opened the office door. Jim, from bending over Miss Jenks as she sat at her desk, rose up and stared at him. And the little pale stenographer grew pink.

"People usually knock," Jim was beginning. "--Oh, Mr. Ellis!"

"Down for the afternoon," said Ellis. "I hate to lunch alone at this hotel. Won't you come with me?"

"Why, I----" hesitated Jim.

"Going up on the hill afterward to see my house," added Ellis. "I won't keep you long."

"You're very good," decided Jim. "Yes, I'll come."

"Of course it's wretched stuff they give us here," remarked Ellis when they were seated at the hotel. "Will you take water, or risk the wine?"

"The wine's not so bad," said Jim. He was pleased at his invitation, but even deference to one so rich could not subdue his pride in special knowledge. "I don't know how it happens, but they have some very decent Medoc."

"Then we'll try it," and Ellis ordered a bottle. He began to feel sure of his estimate of a young man who took wine when alone in the country. Bad blood will show; Ellis recalled his experience with Jim's father.

For although the promoter had once met Mather's father and come off second-best, with the elder Wayne he had been easily master. Ellis had bought up most of Wayne's outstanding notes by the time alcohol removed from society one who so well adorned it; the sale of the house had been merely a return of I. O. U.'s. In just the same way Ellis was providing against Blanchard's collapse, and now was watching Jim as the wine worked on him.

"A hole, a hole!" cried Jim, and the wave of his third glass included all Chebasset. "If it weren't for a little girl, Mr. Ellis----!" Jim gulped down more wine, and Ellis ordered a second bottle.

"That little girl," he asked, "whom I saw at the office?"

"She?" cried Jim loftily. "All very well to have fun with in this place, but a fellow of my standing looks forward to something better than that. Don't pretend ignorance, Mr. Ellis. You're learning what's worth having, even if you didn't know it when first you came to Stirling."

"I know very little about women," returned Ellis steadily.

"Gad," cried Jim, "you've chosen pretty well, then."

"At least," was the reply, and Ellis sighed as if regretfully, "I can't keep three going at once."

Jim laughed. "You don't regret it, I know well enough. You've got too many other things to think of. I have to do it, to make life interesting."

Such a cub as this, it was plain, deserved no mercy. "You won't succeed in one quarter, at least," Ellis answered.

"Where, then?" demanded Jim.

Ellis took his first sip of wine. "At a certain lady's where we have met."

Jim resorted to pantomime. He reached for the bottle and filled his glass; this he held up to the light, and squinted through it; then with deliberation he drank off the wine, and reached for the fresh bottle. After filling, he looked at Ellis. All this he did with an air of very, very evident amusement, and at the end he chuckled.

"For the reason," continued Ellis, quite unmoved, "that you haven't the cash." He took his second sip, but Jim laughed outright.

Then the youth became grave. "Money," he said emphatically, "is all very well in its place. But though you've made your way by it, sir, you overestimate it. Why, that Mrs. Harmon would take----" Suddenly Jim grew red in the face. "You insult her, sir!"

"Good," remarked Ellis, very coldly. "The waiter is out of the room; recollect yourself when he returns. Recollect also that Mrs. Harmon is a very old friend of mine."

"But," stammered Jim, somewhat abashed, "when you say that she would sell herself----"

"You were drinking before you came here," said Ellis, "or you wouldn't take such ideas so easily." He removed the bottle from Jim's elbow, then, as if on second thought, he put it back again. "This is a lonely place, Mr. Wayne; I don't wonder that you take a cock-tail occasionally in the morning. But just remember that it may prevent you from seeing a man's meaning."

"I thought----" began Jim, but Ellis cut him short.

"I know; but never mind. I meant, my dear man, a libel on the sex, perhaps, but not on the individual. They're fond of finery, that's all. And you haven't the money to give it." He looked at Jim with a smile.

"You can't give it to her!" cried Jim. But the exclamation was almost a question.

"To some women you can't--perhaps. But I've never met the kind. And do you suppose the Judge knows what comes into the house?"

"Gad!" murmured Jim.

"A weakness of the sex," resumed Ellis. "Just remember that. Women are softer than we; we've got to humour them. There's no harm in it; a pearl pin now and then--something good, oh, you need something pretty good, or nothing at all."

"Then I'll go on the nothing-at-all system," said Jim with gloom.

"Rot!" answered Ellis. "Do you save so carefully?"

"Save!" exclaimed Jim. "Do you suppose I can save?"

"I forgot," and Ellis spoke apologetically. "Of course, with your salary. But there'll be a good time some day, Mr. Wayne."

"When I'm old," grumbled Jim.

"Gad!" cried Ellis, "with your ability and your youth, I'd be some thousands richer every year!"

"I know," answered the lamb, trying to look as wolfish as he should. "But a fellow can do nothing nowadays without capital."

"But you have something?"

"Some few thousands," replied Jim with deep scorn of fate. "And in my mother's name."

"Your mother is conservative?" asked Ellis.

"Scared," answered Jim.

"And all you learned on the market," said Ellis with sympathy, "going here to waste! Too bad! Get some one to back you."

Jim looked at him sidewise. "Will you do it?"

But Ellis smiled. "Why should I? No; stand on your own feet. Get your mother's power of attorney, and surprise her some day by doubling her income. But as for that, doesn't money pass through your hands down here every week."

"Passes through quickly," answered Wayne. "Comes down Saturday morning, and I pay the men at noon."

"Pay every week?" Ellis inquired. "Every fortnight is what I believe in. But of course--and yet three days, with clever placing, would be enough to make you double that money. Three weeks, and you could--do anything!"

"By Jove!" cried Jim, starting.

"I'll be off," said Ellis, pushing back his chair. "This lunch was better than I expected. We must meet here again, some day."

"Good!" answered Jim. He finished his last glass, but as he rose he was as steady as if he carried nothing. "For all that," muttered Ellis to himself, "your brain is softer than half an hour ago." They separated at the door of the hotel, and went their respective ways.

When Ellis, after inspecting his house, stood on the terrace and looked down upon Chebasset, he still had Jim on his mind. Would the ideas work? Did he still taste that wine in his mouth, or his own words? Small! and Ellis spat. Small, but well done, as the event was to prove. And yet Ellis had neither heard nor read of Mephisto and the student, of Iago and Roderigo.