Part 16

Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. He made good money, as the phrase went, his wages augmented by his tips. He took his tips without shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond what he was paid for. His relation with them being personal, he could see well enough that only in tips could they make him any recognition. With the staff in the house he got on very well, especially with the waitresses, all six of them girls working their way through Radcliffe, Wellesley, or Vassar. They chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because of his height, while to a third he was her Siegfried. When he had no work in the evenings, and their dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives among the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said that what with the air, the food, the fun, and the outdoor life, he was never before in such splendid shape.

Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety which troubled him only now and then.

"Go to it, lad," had been his response when Tom had told him of Mr. Ansley's proposition. "With eighty dollars a month for all summer, and yer keep throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred."

"You're sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?"

Honey made a scornful exclamation. "Lord love yer, Kid, if I was ever goin' to be lonesome I'd 'a begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That's a good 'un!"

And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom noticed a forced strain in Honey's gayety. It was a Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to New Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on the Monday. Honey was in clamorous spirits, right up to an hour before the boy left.

Then he seemed to go flat. Pump up his humor as he would, it had no zest in it. When it came to the last handshake he grinned feebly, but couldn't, or didn't, speak. Tom drove away with a question in his mind as to whether or not, in Honey's professions of a steeled heart, there was not some bravado.

In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had been agreed that she should meet him by the roadside, at the end of the town toward Lowell, and go on with him till he struck the country again. They not only did this, but got out at a druggist's to spend a half hour over ice-cream sodas.

Picking up the dropped threads of intercourse was not so easy as they had expected. It was hard for Tom to make himself believe that in this pretty little thing, all in white with pink roses in her hat, he was talking to his future wife. Since the fervor of his first love letter there had been a slight shift in his point of view. Without being able to locate the change, he felt that the new interests--the car, the inn-club, the variety of experience--had to some small degree crowded Maisie out. She was not quite so essential as she had seemed on the afternoon when he had learned of her departure. Neither was she quite so pretty. He thought with a pang that Honey's predictions might be coming true. Because they might be coming true, his pity was so great that he told her she was looking lovelier than ever.

"Gee, that's something," Maisie accepted, complacently. "With four brats to look after, and all the cooking and washing, and everything--if my father don't marry again soon I'll pass away." She glanced at his chauffeur's uniform. "You look swell."

He felt swell, and told her so. He told her of his wages, of the economies he hoped to make.

"Gee, and you talk of goin' to college, a fellow that can pull in all that money just by bein' a shofer. Why, if you were to go on bein' a shofer we could get married as soon as I got the family off my hands."

He explained to her that it was not the present, but the future for which he was working. A chauffeur had only a chauffeur's possibilities, whereas a man with an education....

"Just my luck to get engaged to a nut," Maisie commented, with forced resignation. "Gee, I got to laff."

Some half dozen times that summer, when errands took him to Boston, they met in the same way. Growing more accustomed to their new relation to each other, he also grew more tender as he realized her limitations and domestic cares. With his first month's wages in his hand, he could bring her little presents on each return from Boston, so helping out her never-failing joy in the flash of her big diamond. That at least she had, when every other blessing was put off to a vague future.

* * * * *

In August, the Ansleys came flying back, driven by the war. It had caught them at Munich, where their French chauffeur, Pierre, had been interned as a prisoner. While taking driving lessons Tom had made Pierre's acquaintance, and that he should now be a prisoner in Germany made the war a reality. For the first few weeks it had been like a battle among giants in the clouds; now it came down to earth as a convulsion among men.

The Ansleys had come to the inn-club because their own house was closed. With Guy and Hildred Tom found his relations changed by the fact that he was a chauffeur. Guy talked to him freely enough, as one young fellow to another, but Hildred had plainly received a hint to mark the distance between them. If she passed him in the grounds, or if he opened the car door for her, she gave him a faint, self-conscious smile, but never spoke to him. Mrs. Ansley freely used the car and him, always calling him Whitelaw.

Philip Ansley was much preoccupied by the international situation. A small, dry man of slightly Mongolian features, and a skin which looked like a parchment lampshade tinted with a little rose, he had made a specialty of international law as it affected the great corporations. New York and Washington both had need of him. When he couldn't go there, those who wished his opinion came to him. Not a little of Tom's work lay in driving him to Keene, the station for New York, to meet the important men seeking his advice. Thus it happened that Tom brought over from Keene, so late one night that he got no more than a dim glimpse of the visitor, the man who was to leave on him the most disturbing impression of the summer.

Having delivered his charge at the inn-club door, he drove his car to the garage, climbed the stairs to his room, and turned into bed. Before six next morning he was up for a plunge in the lake, this being the only hour he could count on as his own.

It was one of those windless mornings late in summer which bring the first hint of fall. The lake was so still that each throw of his arms was like the smashing of a vast metallic mirror. Only a metallic mirror could have had this shining dullness, faintly iridescent, hardly catching the rays of the newly risen sun. Not leaden enough for night, nor silvery enough for day, it kept the aloofness from man, as well as from Nature's smaller blandishments, of its mighty companion, Monadnock. It was an awesome lake, beautiful, withdrawn, because it gave back the mountain's awesomeness, beauty, and remoteness.

Tom's thrust, as he paddled the water behind him, broke for no more than a few seconds that which at once reformed itself. You would have said that the darting of his body, straight as a fish's, clave the water as a bird cleaves the air. After he had gone there was hardly a ripple to tell that he had passed. Built to be a swimmer, loose limbed, loose muscled, and not too bonily spare, he breathed as a swimmer, deeply, gently, without spluttering or loss of his control. In the limpid medium through which another might have sunk like a stone he had that sense of natural support which helps man to his dominion. Now on his right side, now on his left, he could skim like an arrow to its mark for the simple reason that he knew he could.

He turned over on his back and floated. The quiet was that of a world which might never have known the velocity of wind, the ferocity of war. Above him the inviolate sky; around him the mountains nearly as inviolate! And everywhere the living stillness, vibrating, dramatic, with which Nature alone can quicken a dead calm!

Turning over again, he was abandoning the crawl for the forearm stroke, to make his way back to the bathing cabins, when over the water came a long "Ahoy!" Nearer the shore, and a little abeam, there was another man swimming toward him. Tom gave back an "Ahoy!" and made in the direction of the stranger. It was perhaps another chauffeur. Even if it were a resident, or some resident's guest, the informality of sport would put them on a level.

The newcomer had the sun behind him; Tom had it on his face. His features were, therefore, the first to become visible. A strong voice called out, in a tone of astonishment:

"Why, Tad! What are _you_ doing up here in New Hampshire?"

Tom laughed. "Tad--nothing! I'm Tom!"

The other came nearer. "Tom, are you? Excuse me! Took you for my son."

"Sorry I'm not," Tom laughed again. "Somebody else's."

Coming abreast, they headed toward shore. Each face was turned toward the other. Adopting his companion's stroke, Tom adjusted himself to his pace. Though conversation was not easy, the one found it possible to ask questions, the other to answer them.

"Look like my son. What's your name?"

"Whitelaw."

A light came into the eyes, and went out again. "Where do you live?"

"Boston."

"Lived there all your life?"

"Only for the last three years or so."

"Where'd you live before that?"

"New York some of the time."

"Where were you born?"

"The Bronx."

"What was your father's name?"

"Theodore Whitelaw."

There was again that spark in the eyes, flashing and then dying out. "How did he get that name?"

"Don't know. Just a name. Suppose his mother gave it to him."

"Lots of Theodore Whitelaws. Have come across two or three. Like the Colin Campbells and Howard Smiths you run into everywhere. What did your father do?"

"Never heard. Died when I was a kid." Tom felt entitled to ask a question on his own side. "What do you want to know for?"

The other seemed on his guard. "Oh, nothing! Was just--was just struck by the resemblance to--to my boy."

The swerve which took them away from each other was as slight as that which a ship gets from her rudder. Tom continued to play round in the water till he saw the older man reach the bathing cabins, dress, and go away.

That afternoon he was told to drive back to Keene both Mr. Ansley and the guest whom he, Tom, had brought over on the previous evening. As the latter came out to enter the car it was easy to recognize the swimmer of the morning.

Tom held the door open, his hand to his cap. The gentleman gave him a swift, keen look.

"Oh, so this is what you do!"

"Yes, sir; this is what I do. Mr. Ansley got me the job."

"Young fellow whom Guy has befriended," Mr. Ansley explained, as he took his place beside his friend.

But in the Pullman, when Tom had carried in the gentleman's valise, there was another minute in which they were alone. The car was nearly empty; there were still some five minutes before the departure of the train. While the colored porter took the suitcase the traveler turned to Tom. He was a tall man, straight and flexible like Tom himself, but a little heavier.

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen, sir."

A shadow flew across the face. "Tad is seventeen, too. That settles any--" Without stating what was settled by this coincidence of ages, he went on with his quick, peremptory questions. "What do you do when you leave here?"

"I go back for my last year in the Latin School in Boston."

"And then?"

"I go to Harvard."

"Putting yourself through?"

"Only partly, sir."

"Friends?"

"Yes, sir."

The questions ceased. The face, which even a boy like Tom could see to be that of a strong man who must have suffered terribly, grew pensive. When the eyes were bent toward the floor Tom took note of a pair of bushy, outstanding, horizontal eyebrows, oddly like his own.

The reverie ended abruptly. Some thought seemed to be dismissed. It seemed to be dismissed with both decision and relief. But the man held out his hand.

"Good-by."

"Good-by, sir."

It was not the questions, nor the interest, it was the last little act of farewell that gave Tom a glowing feeling in the heart as he went back to his car and Mr. Ansley.

XXIX

It was late that evening before Tom found an opportunity to ask Miss Padley, who kept what the inn-club knew as the office, the name of the guest who had questioned him so closely. Miss Padley was a red-haired, freckled girl, putting herself through Radcliffe. Unused to clerical work, she was tired. When Tom put his query she gazed up at him vacantly, before she could collect her wits.

"The name of the gentleman who left this afternoon?" She called to Ella, one of the waitresses, in her second year at Wellesley. "What was it, Ella? I forget."

As the house was closing for the night some informality was possible. Ella sauntered up.

"What was what?"

Tom's question was repeated.

"Oh, that was the great Henry T. Whitelaw. Big banker. Partner in Meek and Brokenshire's. They say that he and a few other bankers could stop the war if they liked, by holding back the cash. Don't believe it. War's too big. And, say! He was the father of that Whitelaw baby there used to be all the talk about."

Miss Padley looked up, her cheek resting on her hand. "You don't say! Gee, I wish I'd known that. I'd 'a looked at him a little closer." She turned her tired greenish eyes toward Tom. "Your name is Whitelaw, too, isn't it?"

He grinned nervously. "My name is Whitelaw, too, only, like the lady's maid whose name was Shakespeare but was no relation to the play-actor of that name, I don't belong to the banking branch of the family."

Ella exclaimed, as one who makes a discovery. "But, Siegfried, you look as if you did. Doesn't he, Blanche? Look at his eyebrows. They're just like the banker man's."

"Oh, I've looked at them often enough," Miss Padley returned, wearily. "Got his mustaches stuck on in the wrong place. I'm off."

Yawning, she shut her ledger, closed an open drawer, and rose. But Ella, a dark little thing, kept her snappy black eyes on Tom.

"You do look like him, Siegfried. I'd put in a claim if I were you. I'm single, you know, and I've always admired you. Think of the romance it would make if the Whitelaw baby took home as his bride a poor but honest working girl!"

Dodging Ella's chaff, Tom escaped to the garage. It was queer how the Whitelaw baby haunted him. Honey!--Ella!--and the Whitelaw baby's own father!

But the haunting stopped. Neither Ella nor Miss Padley took it as more than a passing pleasantry, forgotten with the morning. The tall man who had asked him questions never came back again. The rest of the summer went by with but one little incident to remain in his memory.

It was a very little incident. Walking one day in the road that ran round the lake he came face to face with Hildred Ansley. She had grown since the previous winter, a little in height, and more in an indefinable development. She was fifteen now; but, always older than her age, she was more like seventeen or eighteen. Her formal manner, her decided mind, her "grown-up" choice of words, made her already something of that finished entity for which we have only the word lady. Ella had said of her that at twenty she would look like forty, and at forty continue to look like twenty. Tom thought that this might be true--an early fullness of womanhood, but a long one.

She had been playing tennis, and swung her racket as she came along. He was sorry for this direct encounter, since she might find it awkward; but when she waved her racket to him, it was clear that she did not. She felt perhaps the more independent, released from her mother's supervision and the inn. Her smile, something in her way of pausing in the road, an ease of manner beyond analysis, put them both on the plane on which their acquaintance had begun. The slanting yellowish-brown eyes together with the faint glimmer of a smile heightened that air of mystery which had always made her different from other girls.

"How have you been getting along?"

He said he had been doing very well.

"How have you liked the job?"

"Fine! Everybody's been nice to me--"

"Everybody likes you. All the same, I hope, if they ask you to come back next year, that--you won't."

"Why not?"

"Oh, just--because!"

Slipping away, she left him with the summer's second memory. She hoped he wouldn't take the place again--_because_! Because--what? Could she have meant what he thought she must have meant? Was it possible that she didn't like to see him in a situation something like a servant's? Though he never again, during all the rest of the summer, had so much speech with her alone, it gave him a hint to turn over in his mind.

Driving the car back to Boston, after the inn-club had closed, he saw Maisie for the last time that year. Uncertain of his hours, he had been unable to arrange to have her meet him, and so looked her up in her home. A small wooden house, once stained a dark red, weather-worn now to a reddish-dun, it stood on the outskirts of the town. In a weedy back-yard, redeemed from ugliness by the flaming of a maple tree, Maisie was pinning newly washed clothes to a clothes-line stretched between the back door and a post. Two children, a boy of six and a girl of eight, were tumbling about with a pup. At sound of the stopping of the car in the roadway in front of the house Maisie turned, a clothes-pin held lengthwise in her mouth. Even with her sleeves rolled up and her hair in wisps, she couldn't be anything but pretty.

She came and sat beside him in the car, the children and the pup staring up at them in wonder.

"Gee, I wish he'd get married; but I daresay he won't for ever so long. Married to the bottle, that's what he is. It was six years after my mother died before he took on the last one. That's what makes me so much older than the four kids. All the same I'd beat it if you'd take a shofer's job and settle down. I'm not bound to stay here and make myself a slave."

It was the burden of all Maisie's reasoning, and he had to admit its justice. He was asking her to wait a long four years before he could give her a home. It would have been more preposterous than it was if among poor people, among poor young people especially, a long courtship, with marriage as a vague fulfillment, was not general. Any such man as she was likely to get would have to toil and save, and save and toil, before he could pay for the few sticks of furniture they would need to set up housekeeping. Never having thought of anything else, she was the more patient now; but patient with a strain of rebellion against Tom's whim for education.

She cried when he left her; he almost cried himself, from a sense of his impotence to take her at once from a life of drudgery. The degree to which he loved her seemed to be secondary now to her helpless need of him. True, he could get a job as chauffeur and make a hundred dollars a month to begin with. To Maisie that would be riches; but a hundred and fifty a month would then become his lifelong limit and ambition. Even to save Maisie now he couldn't bring himself to sacrifice not merely his future but her own. Once he was "through college," it seemed to him that the treasures of the world would lie open.

Arrived in Grove Street, he found one new condition which made his return easier. Honey, who, for the sake of economy, had occupied a hall-bedroom through the summer, had reserved another, on the floor above, for Tom. The relief from the sharing of one big room amounted to a sense of luxury.

On the other hand, Honey, for the first time since Tom had known him, was moody and tired. He was not ill; he was only less cast-iron than he used to be. He found it harder to go to work in the morning; he was more spent when he came back at night, as if some inner impulse of virility was wearing itself out. The war worried him. The fact that old England had met a foe whom she couldn't walk over at once disturbed his ideas as to the way in which the foundations of the world had been laid.

"Anything can happen now, kid," he declared, in discussing the English retreat from Mons. "Haven't felt so bad since the bloody cop give me the whack with his club what put out me eye. If Englishmen has to turn tail before Germans, well, what next?"

But to Tom's suggestions that he should go to Canada and enlist in the British army Honey was as stone. "You're too young. Y'ain't got yer growth. I don't care what no one says. War is for men. Yer first business, and yer last business, and yer only business, is yer eddication."

It must be admitted that Tom agreed with him. He had no longing to go to war. Europe was far away while life was near. Education, Maisie, the future, had the first claim on him. It began to occur to him that even Honey had a claim on him, now that he was not so vigorous as he used to be.

There were other interests to make war remote. On returning to town, after a summer amid the spaciousness, beauty, and comfort which the few could give themselves, he was oppressed by the privations of the many. Never before had he thought of them. He had taken Grove Street for granted. He had taken it for granted that life was hard and crowded and bitter and cold and ugly, and couldn't be anything else. Now he had seen for himself that it could be easy and beautiful and healthy. True, he had always known that there were rich people as well as poor people; but never before had he been close enough to the rich to see their luxuries in detail. The contrasts in the human scheme of things having thus come home to him he was moved to a distressed wondering.

What brought these differences about? If all the rich were industrious and good, while all the poor were idle and extravagant, he could have understood it better. But it wasn't so. The rich were often idle and extravagant, and didn't suffer. The poor were nearly always industrious--they couldn't be anything else--and were as good as they had leisure to be, but suffered from something all the time. How could this injustice be endured? What was to be done about it? Wasn't it everybody's duty to try to right such a wrong?

Because he had only now become aware of it he supposed that nobody but the Slav and Jewish agitators had been aware of it before. Louisburg Square, and all that element in the world which Louisburg Square represented, could never have thought of it. If it had, it couldn't have slept at night in its bed. That it should lie snug and soft and warm while all the rest of the world--at least a good three-fourths--lay cold and hard and hungry, must be out of the question. If the rich people only knew! It was strange that someone hadn't told them. What were the newspapers and the governments and the churches doing that they weren't ringing with protests against this fundamental evil?

More than ever Honey's rebellion against the lor of proputty seemed to him based on some principle he couldn't trace. Honey was doubtless all wrong; and yet the other thing was just as wrong as Honey. He started him talking on the subject as they strolled to their dinner that evening.

"Seems as if this 'ere old human race didn't have no spunk. Yer can put anything over on them, and they'll 'ardly lift a kick. It's like as if they was hypnertized. Them as has got everything is hypnertized into thinkin' they've a right to it; and them as have got nothink'll let theirselves believe as nothink is all that belongs to 'em. Comes o' most o' the world bein' orthodocks. Lord love yer, I'd rather think for meself if it landed me ten months out'n every twelve in jail, than have two thousand a year and yet be an old tabby-orthodock what never had a mind."

They were seated at the table in Mrs. Turtle's basement dining-room, when, looking up and down the double row of guests, Honey whispered, "Tabby-orthodocks--all of 'em."