George Chester - Young Wallingford

Gilman, pale before, went suddenly ghastly. The blow of mockery had come too soon upon the heels of his relief.

“I can’t have it,” he managed to stammer through parched lips. “I must refuse, sir. I – I can not be connected in any way with that business, Mr. Smalley. I – I abhor it. Never, as long as I live – ”

Suddenly the fish-white face and staring eyes of Gilman were not in the line of Mr. Smalley’s astonished vision, for Gilman had slid to the floor, between his high stool and his desk. Sam Glidden, coming into the bank a moment after, found Smalley working feverishly over the prostrate form of his feebly reviving clerk.

Just as Jonathan Reuben Wix reached his home, a delivery man was taking in at the front door a fine dresser trunk. On the porch stood a new alligator traveling-bag, and a big, new suit-case of thick sole leather, trimmed profusely with the most expensive knobs and clamps, and containing as elaborate a toilet set as is made for the use of men. In the hall he found five big pasteboard boxes from his tailor. He had the trunk and the suit-case and the traveling-bag delivered up to his room; the clothing he carried up himself.

That morning he had dressed himself in new linen throughout. Now he took off the suit he wore and put on one of the new business suits. He opened half a dozen huge bundles of haberdashery which he had purchased within the past week, and began packing them in his trunk: underwear, shirts, socks, collars, cravats, everything brand new and of the choicest quality. He packed away the other new business suit, the Prince Albert, the tuxedo, the dress suit – the largest individual order his tailor had ever received – putting into his trunk and suit-case and traveling-bag not one thing that he had ever worn before; nor did he put into any of his luggage a single book or keepsake, for these things had no meaning to him. When he was completely dressed and packed he went to his mother’s room and knocked on the door. It was her afternoon for the Women Journalists’ Club, and she was very busy indeed over a paper she was to read on The Press: Its Power for Evil . Naturally, interruptions annoyed her very much.

“Well, what is it, son?” she asked in her level, even tone as he came into the room. Her impatience was very nicely suppressed, indeed.

“I’m going to New York on the six-thirty,” he told her.

“Really, I don’t see how I can spare any money until the fifteenth,” she objected.

“I have plenty of money,” he assured her.

“Oh,” she replied with evident relief, and glanced longingly back at her neatly written paper.

“I can even let you have some if you want it,” he suggested.

“No, thank you. I have sufficient, I am sure, portioned out to meet all demands, including the usual small surplus, up to the fifteenth. It’s very nice of you to offer it, however.”

“You see,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m not coming back.”

She turned now, and faced him squarely for the first time.

“You’d better stay here,” she told him. “I’m afraid you’ll cost me more away from home than you do in Filmore.”

“I shall never cost you a cent,” he declared. “I have found out how to make money.”

She smiled in a superior way.

“I am a bit incredulous; but, after all, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Your father at least had that quality, and you should have inherited something from him besides” – and she paused a trifle – “his name.” She sighed, and then continued: “Very well, son, I suppose you must carve out your own destiny. You are quite old enough to make the attempt, and I have been anticipating it for some time. After all, you really ought to have very little trouble in impressing the world favorably. You dress neatly,” she surveyed him critically, “and you make friends readily. Shall I see you again before you go?”

“I scarcely think so. I have a little down-town business to look after, and shall take dinner on the train; so I’ll just say good-by to you now.”

He shook hands with her and stooped down, and they kissed each other dutifully upon the cheek. Mrs. Wix, being advanced, did not believe in kissing upon the mouth. After he had gone, a fleeting impression of loneliness weighed upon her as much as any purely sentimental consideration could weigh. She looked thoughtfully at the closed door, and a stirring of the slight maternal instinct within her made her vaguely wistful. She turned, still with that faint tugging within her breast which she could not understand, and it was purely mechanical that her eyes, dropping to the surface of the paper, caught the sentence: “Mental suggestion, unfit for growing minds, is upon every page.” The word “Mental” seemed redundant, and she drew her pen through it, neatly changing the “s” in “suggestion” to a capital.

A cab drove past Wix as he started down the street and he saw Smalley in it. He turned curiously. What was Smalley doing there? He stopped until he saw the cab draw up in front of Gilman’s house. He saw Smalley assist young Gilman out of the cab, and Gilman’s mother run out to meet them. He was thoughtful for a moment over that, then he shrugged his shoulders and strode on.

On the train that night as he swaggered into the dining-car, owning it, in effect, and all it contained, he saw, seated alone at a far table, no less a person than Horace G. Daw, as black and as natty as ever, and with a mustache grown long enough to curl a little bit at the ends.

“Hello, old pal,” greeted Daw. “Where now?”

“I’m going out alone into the cold, cold world, to make fortunes and spend them.”

“Half of that stunt is a good game,” commented Mr. Daw.

Wix chuckled.

“Both ends of it look good to me,” he stated. “I’ve found the recipe for doing it, and it was you that tipped off the plan.”

“I certainly am the grand little tipper-off,” agreed Daw, going back in memory over their last meeting. “You got to that three thousand, did you?”

“Oh, no,” said Wix. “I only used it to get a little more. Our friend Gilman has his all back again. Of course, I didn’t use your plan as it laid. It was too raw, but it gave me the suggestion from which I doped out one of my own. I’ve got to improve my system a little, though. My rake-off’s too small. In the wind-up I handled twenty-one thousand dollars, and only got away with eight thousand-odd of it for myself.”

“You haven’t it all with you?” asked Daw, a shade too eagerly.

Wix chuckled, his broad shoulders heaving and his pink face rippling.

“No use, kind friend,” said he. “Just dismiss it from your active but greedy mind. If anybody gets away unduly with a cent of this wad, all they need to do is to prove it to me, and I’ll make them a present of the balance. No, my dark-complected brother, the bulk of it is in a safe place in little old New York, where I can go get it as I need it; but I have enough along to buy, I think. It seems to me you bought last,” and they both grinned at the reminiscence.

“I wasn’t thinking of trying to annex any of that coin,” lied Mr. Daw glibly, and changing entirely his attitude toward Mr. Wix as his admiration grew; “but I was thinking that we might cook up something together. I’ll put up dollar for dollar with you. I’ve just been harvesting, myself.”

Again Wix chuckled.

“Declined with thanks,” he returned. “I don’t mind trailing around a bit with you when we get to New York, and also meeting the carefully assorted selection of dead-sure-thing geniuses who must belong to your set, but I’ll go no further. For one thing, I don’t like the idea of a partner. It cramps me to split up. For another thing, I wouldn’t like to hook up in business with you. You’re not safe enough; you trifle too much with the law, which is not only foolish but unnecessary.”