I
The suburban train was crowded and the stops were frequent.
Two young men, who had secured seats near the end of their car, were occupied, one in reading an evening paper and the other in making some calculations in a note book. The one reading stopped often to quote a news item to his companion, or to make some remark. This was John Winter. He was rather short and well nourished, one of the men who indicate that in later years they will grow stout. He had very blue eyes and fair hair and his clear skin was smoothly shaven. His cheeks were pink and white, his lips very red. His clothing, which was of the latest cut, was dark blue. He wore, as was his invariable custom, a necktie the exact color of his eyes, which was for him a most becoming combination. With this exception, however, his dress showed a noticeable lack of care. He had a somewhat boisterous and affectionate manner, and a rather loud voice. When excited or interested he had a boyish way of removing his hat and running his fingers through his hair.
His friend, James Sprague, did not seem to mind John’s interruptions and replied good naturedly. Both appeared in the best of spirits and the good understanding between them was evident.
Sprague was tall and slender, with large hands and feet. An even color glowed through his darkly tinted skin. He had deep set brown eyes. The other features were large; the mouth straight. A brown moustache, closely cut as was his dark hair, shaded his heavy upper lip. He wore fastidiously selected clothing that displayed an exaggeratedly quiet taste; the cravat chosen in stripes too minute for good general effect, and the cuffs, shoes, and other details of attire immaculate and suggestive of extreme thought for appearance. Sprague’s voice was low pitched and subdued. He spoke slowly and smiled occasionally in an extraordinarily attractive manner.
It was raining. At one of the stations a pretty girl entered the car, her mackintosh and umbrella dripping. John Winter, although farthest from the aisle, jumped quickly to his feet to offer her his place. Sprague moved next to the window, to allow her to sit down without passing him, and at once resumed his figuring. Winter hung to a strap and continued the reading of his paper and his frequent remarks to his friend, glancing now and then at the girl’s profile which was particularly pleasing. She looked demurely at her gloves, smiling slightly at some of John’s conspicuously uttered sallies to Jim. After three stations were passed she arose, and, with a hasty glance at the pleasant boyish face of the young man standing, left the car. Winter’s gaze followed her to the door.
“Why don’t you sit down, John?” asked Sprague without lifting his eyes from his work. Winter sat down rather suddenly. “We ought to put cement into that cellar wall of Howland’s house,” Sprague continued. “I told him so today and it was included in the estimates.”
“I didn’t know he came to the office,” returned Winter. “When was he there?”
“Just before you got back from lunch,” answered his companion.
“I was looking at some designs for art tiles,” explained John, “and so I was late. I wanted to see Howland badly. Did he say anything about my decoration scheme for the interior?”
“I showed it to him,” responded Sprague, “but he said he couldn’t afford it.”
“I’m sorry we ever touched his rotten house!” exclaimed Winter. “He has no more taste than a billy goat.”
“He’s coming in again tomorrow.” Sprague smiled a little. “So you can talk with him yourself.” Then, after a pause, “Lucy is expecting her mother, you said. When does she get here?”
“Tomorrow,” replied John with a grimace, taking up his paper again.
Jim resumed his figuring.
“Here, wake up,” he said a few minutes later, glancing out of the window as the train slowed down at a small station. “This is Rosedene. Suppose we get off here.” And the two alighted from the car.
When they turned into the street where John lived the rain had ceased falling, and they saw Mrs. Winter and Dimmie waiting at the gate in front of the pretty yard.
Lucy Winter’s smile was of the slow but warming kind. Her child’s was also warm, but quicker, like his father’s. As Lucy kissed John, Dimmie (who was named for Sprague, “Jimmie” having been corrected into “Dimmie” by the young gentleman himself at a fabulously tender age) attacked Jim with such demonstrations of esteem as would have disconcerted a less robust and self-contained individual.
Lucy was of medium size, with hands and feet not too small. She had a rather generous figure, the waist large and bosom low. Her hair, fine in texture and not abundant, was of a nondescript shade of brown, and was arranged low over her ears. Her nose was extremely shapely, her mouth large, but so well cut as to be beautiful. Her grey eyes had a wonderful clarity and frankness of gaze. She could not be called pretty, partly because the impression of her personality suggested too much seriousness, and partly because the line from her ear to her chin was too long. She wore a simple house dress of wash goods. The gingham sleeve apron, which she had taken off before going to the front gate, hung over one arm. While not over strong physically Lucy suggested an atmosphere of wholesomeness. And she was direct, almost abrupt, in speech.
Dimmie was a slim child of four with features and complexion like John’s, but he had his mother’s fine grey eyes. Dressed in clean white blouse and breeches, white shoes and socks, his yellow hair bobbed in Dutch fashion, he made a picture of health and buoyancy.
“What a glorious rain, Lucy.” John chuckled exuberantly. “The train went through it like a ship in a storm.”
“Did it?” She smiled, feeling his coat sleeve to see if it was damp. “Are your feet wet, John? And you too, Jim?” shaking hands warmly with Sprague.
“No,” they both answered. “Just like chorus girls,” John added, at which they all laughed.
“Don’t step in the water, dear,” Lucy cautioned Dimmie as they turned to go into the house.
The first thing Jim did, after hanging his hat and rain coat in the hall, was to offer to help put the dinner on, as this was his usual task on such occasions.
“I don’t need any help,” said Lucy briskly, leading him back into the dining room. “You two boys fix yourselves some near cocktails while I finish. It’ll only take me a minute. You know where the ingredients are, Jim.”
Jim mixed the cocktails, going out in the kitchen to the refrigerator for ice, and swearing when he could not find the shaker.
“Where is it, Lucy?” he asked.
“Why don’t you look for it?”
“I have,” he protested.
“Here it is.” She brought it from the pantry where he had just been. “If it had been a snake it would have bitten you.”
“Say, but that soup smells good,” he exclaimed as she removed a cover and placed a tureen on the kitchen table. “What kind of soup is it?”
“Wait and see,” she replied. “You go and fix that cocktail or the soup will get cold—and call John.”
Jim obeyed. John came in from the living room, where he had been playing “The Evening Star” from Tannhäuser on the piano, with many mistakes in the execution, and Lucy put the soup on.
“Sit down,” she commanded. “You know your place, Jim. Where’s Dimmie?”
“I’ll get him,” offered Jim, going out through the kitchen. “There’s some cocktail left for you,” he called back.
Lucy took up the glass and tasted its contents gingerly. “I don’t like it,” she objected to John, making a face.
“Oh, women usually don’t like dry cocktails,” he laughed. “That’s a Martini. We make Manhattans for the ladies. But it’s almost as good as a real one. Old Jim’s supply of alcohol and synthetic flavors won’t last much longer though.”
Jim came in with Dimmie, and dinner was begun.
“I’ve been thinking a long time,” Jim looked alternately at Lucy and John as he spoke, “that we ought to combine with some such firm as Layard’s occasionally so that we can swing bigger things. They are close to all the supply companies.”
“Have some more soup,” urged Lucy.
“Believe I will.” Jim handed her his soup plate. “It’s as good as I suspected. What kind of soup is it anyway?”
“If you cant tell after eating it, I think its name would be wasted on you,” said Lucy, laughing.
“Now that contract for the new incinerator,” Jim continued unruffled, “might just as well have come our way. In fact it was offered to me, but we couldn’t consider it because we weren’t in touch with people handling the materials, and hadn’t capital to tackle it alone.”
“Do you mean going into partnership with Layard’s?” inquired Lucy, cutting up Dimmie’s meat for him.
“Oh, no.” Jim smiled. “We’re too small fry for that. Just an understanding, so we can have more leeway, agreeing of course to let them supply us in our other projects.”
“I see,” Lucy nodded. “Aren’t you hungry, dear?” she asked John. “You didn’t finish your soup.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” John assured her. “I was thinking out a color combination for Howland’s house. I don’t like the shade of the slate roof he wants. It doesn’t go well with Milwaukee brick.”
“Well, eat your dinner, dearie. You’ll have a headache if you don’t.”
John began to eat with appetite.
“What was that you were spouting about?” he asked Jim.
“The incinerator,” repeated his friend. “I want to get hold of such things. Otherwise we will have to stick to small dwellings, and there’s very little in them under present conditions, except of course on a large scale.”
“Incinerator!” John ran his fingers through his hair. “What a dream for an architect! I suppose you’d decorate it with conventionalized garbage cans.”
“Well,” insisted Jim, “there’s money in such things, and that’s what we’re after.”
“It sure is,” Lucy put in. Then, turning to Dimmie, “Don’t eat with your knife, baby. That’s not nice. Let mother show you. Hold your fork so. That’s right.”
“Money’s all right, but it’s not everything!” exclaimed John. “An artist has dreams that are more than meat and raiment. But it’s some job to achieve anything artistic in this country!”
“Or in any other country,” amended Jim.
“Well, ours is the limit,” John retorted. “That’s the reason I wanted to go to Europe—to drink in an atmosphere. To live and study where the almighty dollar isn’t supreme! I’ve tried to hang on to ideals, but grubbing for bread first drags you down to designing ugly cottages for fools and ends by offering you an incinerator. We’ll probably wind up on packing houses and the city dump yard.”
Jim laughed.
“Let’s get hold of the money, and then you can swim in early Tuscan and post-impressionism and dabble in watercolors all you want to.”
“Yes, money means opportunity to do the things we want to—for us and for Dimmie,” Lucy added more seriously.
“You two will have us running a contracting and jobbing concern before long, instead of an architect’s studio.”
“I’d run a fertilizer plant if there was money in it,” declared Jim.
“Well I wouldn’t, and I don’t think my boy would want advantages purchased at the cost of his father’s soul. Would you, son?” John rumpled Dimmie’s hair.
“I want a balloon,” remarked Dimmie.
“Heredity,” chuckled Jim, and Lucy laughed.
“You’re all atavism,” John retorted.
“What’s atavizzen?” queried Dimmie.
“Ask your uncle Jim, son.”
Dimmie looked at Jim who said, “I’ll bring you some next time I come out, Dimmie.”
“By the way, Lucy,” resumed John, “that reminds me. What train does your mother come on tomorrow?”
“On the seven o’clock, I think.” Lucy rose and took a letter from a drawer in the table by the kitchen door. “Seven ten C. and W.,” she corrected, consulting the letter.
“Morning or evening?”
“She didn’t say.” Lucy glanced again through the letter. “We’ll have to get a time table.”
“Now isn’t that just like a woman?” John looked at Lucy teasingly.
“It’s the morning train,” Jim informed them. “There’s no through evening train on the C. and W. at seven ten and there is in the morning.”
“By George, you must be taking Professor Forgetproof’s correspondence course for strengthening the memory, Jim. You certainly do carry around a bunch of useless facts in your head.”
“This one wasn’t,” said Lucy smiling.
“I thought it wasn’t till night.” John sighed and lighted a cigarette.
“He wanted all day to talk Howland into a Byzantine decoration scheme for his interior,” Jim explained to Lucy, getting out his pipe meanwhile.
“That’s right,” admitted John, blowing smoke rings and poking his finger through them.
There was a moment’s silence. Jim’s pipe seemed to be out of order.
“I want to get down,” announced Dimmie, and a slight tension was broken.
“Let mother untie your bib first, dear. Where are you going, baby?”
“I’m goin’ to sit in Uncle Jim’s lap.”
“Why Uncle Jim hasn’t had his coffee yet, son.”
“Come on, kid,” invited Jim, moving his chair sidewise to the table. “I can attend to coffee and you too.”
“There’s no use getting self conscious about this matter of your mother, Lucy.” John returned to the unwelcome subject. “We’ve no desire to keep anything from Jim.”
“Of course not,” Lucy agreed quickly.
“This is our last evening alone, Jim.” John ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s all right for Lucy’s mother to forgive me, I suppose, but as my chief crime seems to have been marrying her daughter, I’m not so grateful as she probably imagines.”
“She felt unkindly toward me long before I ever met you, John,” Lucy said seriously, looking at Dimmie.
“But more since,” John insisted.
“To be sufficient for yourselves is the greatest crime toward other people,” remarked Jim, straightening Dimmie’s collar. “Believe it’s begun to rain again,” he added, glancing toward the window.
“You’ll be surprised when you see mother,” averred Lucy irrelevantly.
Jim laughed.
“I shouldn’t feel much anxiety about anybody kin to Lucy.”
“Joking aside,” interrupted John, “to be blamed as I was has been a pretty painful experience.”
Lucy smiled at him.
“I don’t think anybody was to blame,” she decided.
“You never do, Lucy,” returned Jim.
“That’s a fact,” John complained. “Now I think there are times when it’s up to a man’s self-respect to blame the other fellow a little.”
Jim puffed at his pipe, staring at the ceiling.
“Well, John, if Lucy can overlook things you ought to be able to. She’s the one who has been up against it. You shouldn’t kick.”
“Yes, he should, Jim,” put in Lucy hastily. “Anybody but John would feel resentment still.”
John lighted another cigarette.
“Oh, that’s nothing, Lucy. I couldn’t very well feel hard toward anyone who seems as cut up as your mother in—in her present situation.”
“Plenty of people could,” insisted Lucy.
“I guess she resented your father’s having been here,” said John, laughing uncomfortably.
“Well, Papa has done so much for me that nothing can make me turn against him,” declared Lucy.
John rumpled his hair again.
“Hang it all, you can’t blame me for not being crazy to have a stranger in the house indefinitely, no matter how nice she might prove to be!”
“Especially one who neglected to seek your acquaintance until she was in trouble,” put in Lucy with an unaccustomed approach to bitterness.
Jim knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“I don’t blame you for feeling a little sore toward your mother, Lucy,” he remarked.
“I try not to,” said Lucy impatiently, “but—”
Jim smiled.
“If it had been anyone else but John, eh?”
“If it had been anyone else but John,” she repeated; “exactly.”
“He’s an honor to the family,” Jim declared, reaching over and pulling John’s rebellious hair.
“He is.” Lucy was emphatic.
John arose and went around the table to Lucy.
“You’re a good kid, Lucy,” he said, leaning down and kissing her forehead.
She stood up and smoothed his rumpled hair.
“Where’s Dimmie gone to?” she asked.
“Here I am, Mamma,” Dimmie called from the floor on the opposite side of the table.
“Come and help Mother clear off the table, Sonny.”
“I’ll help too,” offered Jim.
“You can wipe the dishes,” she conceded.