Harold MacGrath - The Best Man

Poor girl! It was a heart-breaking business. How in the world should he begin, and where should he stop? Ah, that was it! He would lay the matter before her in a manner that would conceal the vital nearness of the case, as if it were some client of his who was unknown to her. And when she had judged the case, he would speak the bald truth. It would be a cruel blow, but nevertheless he must deal it. She loved her father, and after his own peculiar fashion her father loved her. She was the only one in the family who could wheedle him out of a purpose; to the rest of the family his word was law immutable. It was very hard, sighed Carrington. For the father he had neither pity nor sympathy; there were many ugly tales about his financial dealings; but his whole heart went out unreservedly to the girl.

When Carrington had gone to Cavenaugh, his heart in his throat, to speak to him relative to his daughter's hand, he unwittingly knocked off the top of a volcano.

"Marry my daughter?" Cavenaugh roared, emphasizing his wrath and disapproval with a bang of fist upon palm. "My daughter shall marry only among her equals, not among her inferiors. A king is not good enough for my Kate." There was another bang of the fist, decided and final. "A lawyer? Not if I know myself. I wouldn't trust a lawyer out of sight," bluntly. "Kate shall marry a duke or a prince, if I can find one suitable."

Carrington would have smiled had the moment been less serious.

"No man can possibly appreciate her worth more readily than I, sir," he replied, "or love her more dearly."

"Love?" with a snort. "Twaddle out of story-books!"

"But you yourself love her."

"I'm her father," Cavenaugh returned complacently, adding a gesture which had the effect of describing the fact that it was perfectly logical for a father to love his daughter, but that it wasn't logical at all for any other male biped to love her.

"I am sorry," said the disheartened suitor, rising. "I suppose that after this unpleasant interview …"

"Oh, you're a decent sort," interrupted Cavenaugh generously; "and if you are of a mind to behave yourself hereafter, you will always find a chair at my table. But my daughter is not for you, sir, emphatically not. That is all, sir;" and Cavenaugh picked up his evening paper.

After such a rebuff, most young men would have given up; but Carrington never gave up till there was no possibility of winning. Immediately after the interview he went to the higher court with his appeal.

"Let us have patience," the girl whispered. "I'll undertake to bring him to reason."

But Carrington went home that night without his love for the father increasing any.

And so the matter stood at the present time. The affair had gone neither forward nor backward.

Ah, were he less honest, how easily he could bring the old curmudgeon to terms! There was that in his pocket which would open the way to the altar, quickly enough. But Carrington was manly and honest to the core, and to him blackmail stood among the basest of crimes. Many times during the past forty-eight hours the tempter had whispered in his ear that here was a way out of his difficulties; but the young man had listened unmoved.

During the summer and autumn months of the year the Cavenaughs lived at their country place over in New Jersey, and there Carrington spent the week-ends. There were horses to ride, golf and tennis, and a Saturday night dance at the Country Club. To be with the girl you love, even if you can't have her, is some compensation. Cavenaugh never joined the fêtes and sports of the summer colonists, but he offered no objections to the feminine members of his household for selecting Carrington as their escort for the week-ends. Indeed, by now he began to consider Carrington as a harmless, sensible, well-groomed young man, who relieved him of all the painful duties to the frivolous. If the colonists insisted on coupling his daughter's name with Carrington's, let them do so; when the proper moment came he would disillusionize them. For himself, he always had some good old crony down to while away the dull Sundays; and together they consummated plans that gave the coup de grâce to many a noble business galleon. This particular summer there were no dukes or princes floating around unattached, and Cavenaugh agreed that it was a commendable time to lay devices by which to ambush the winter money.

There were nights when Cavenaugh did not sleep very well; but of this, more anon.

Shortly after his determination to tell Kate half a truth, Carrington left the office and made an early train into New Jersey. All the way over to the Cavenaugh station he was restless and uneasy. The fatal papers still reposed in his pocket. He had not dared to leave them in the office safe; his partner, who had had no hand in the investigation, might stumble across them, and that was the last thing in the world he desired. He knew not exactly what to do with them; for they burned like fire in his pocket, and seemed to scorch his fingers whenever he touched them to learn if they were still there. A thousand and one absurd suppositions assailed him. Supposing, for instance, there should be a wreck; supposing he should be robbed; supposing he should leave his vest on the links; and so forth and so forth. It was very depressing. If only he stood in the open, unhandicapped; if only he might throw the gauntlet at Cavenaugh's feet the moment they met!

Ah, if he had only attended to his own affairs! But he hadn't; and his inquisitiveness had plunged him into a Chinese tangle from which there seemed to be no exit. But there was an exit; only, if at that moment Cassandra had whispered the secret into his ear, it would have appealed to him as the most improbable thing under the sun. However, there are no trustworthy Cassandras these sordid days; a single look into the future costs a dollar; and as for Greek choruses, they trundle push-carts on the East Side.

He had broken bread and eaten salt at Cavenaugh's table; and now it was decreed that he must betray him. It was not a pleasant thought. And still less pleasant was the thought of telling Kate (in a roundabout fashion, it is true) that her father was not an honest man. According to financial ethics, what Cavenaugh did was simply keen business instinct; nothing more. If you or I should happen to bend an odd cornice of the majestic pillar of law, we'd be haled off to the county jail forthwith; but if we possessed the skill to smash the whole fabric or rather, to continue the metaphor, the whole pillar, the great world would sit up and admire us. What are old laws for, anyhow? Build you never so wisely your law, there will always be some one to come along and tack on a nice little amendment, subtly undoing in a moment what it took years of labor to accomplish. In this instance, Cavenaugh had been careless; he had forgotten to introduce his amendment. An infinitesimal grain of sand will stop the best regulated clock. The infallible invariably die on the heels of their first victory.

On leaving the train, Carrington espied the Cavenaugh station carriage. The coachman was talking to a little wiry old man, whose gray eyes twinkled and whose complexion was mottled and withered like a wind-fall apple. Seeing Carrington draw nigh, the coachman touched his hat respectfully, while the little old man, who was rather shabbily dressed, stepped quickly around the corner of the platform. Evidently he did not wish to be inspected at close range. Carrington threw his suit-case and golf-bag into the carriage, and followed them. Thereupon the coachman touched the horses lightly, and they started westward at a brisk trot.

"Who's your friend?" asked Carrington, who, though never familiar, was always friendly toward his inferiors.

"He's no friend of mine, sir," answered the coachman, with well-bred contempt. "Miss Cavenaugh directed me to drive you straight to the club, sir."