“You let them alone,” said Margaret. “They’ll work it out some way.”
And for a considerable time James did let them alone. When he could stand it no longer, he devised small, innocently obvious schemes to throw them together, but without much result. For instance, he would stand down in the lower hall and bellow up to the third floor.
“Hi!—Warrington!” he would yell. “Put down that book and come on to the movies. Hurry up!”
And sometimes Warrington went. The desire to sit next to Holly in the warm darkness was too much for him. They would sit side by side, saying little or nothing, and sometimes one or the other would lean a bit to one side, and there would be for an instant a sense of contact that warmed and thrilled them both.
And then James, sturdily holding Margaret’s hand, would shift his position and glance over at them, and they would straighten self-consciously and miserably.
Once James caught Holly in the hall looking up, after Howard had disappeared above, and he put a hand on her shoulder.
“See here, sister,” he said. “If you like him, why don’t you let him see it? I think he’s darned unhappy myself.”
And she had looked at him with her direct and honest eyes.
“Why should he care for me?” she asked him. “I used him; we all used him. I don’t see how he can bear to look at me.”
“Well, I do,” said James stoutly. “And as for the other matter, that’s all water over the dam now. He’s none the worse for it, is he?”
There came, however, a terrible day, when James came home to find a car in front of the house, and in the drawing room a tall young man with prominent eyes and a rather pasty skin. The door was open, and James stopped there and gave the visitor a long hard look. Then he stamped back to Margaret in the pantry.
“Who’s that in the parlour with Holly?” He demanded.
Margaret was looking worried.
“It’s Furness Brooks again,” she said. “Really, I don’t know why he came. I thought that—Where are you going, James?”
“Don’t worry about me, my girl,” he said loftily. And he went up the stairs. He walked into Warrington’s room without the ceremony of knocking, passed that morose and brooding young gentleman without a word, and stalked across to a window.
“Come here,” he said. “Look down there. Do you know whose car that is?”
“I know it. What about it?”
“Well!” said James. “What are you going to do? Sit here belly-aching, or go down and throw him out?”
“What’s the good of either, if she wants him?”
“She doesn’t want him!” James roared. “Not any more than she wants the smallpox. She’s thrown him over once. But if he hasn’t the guts to stay away, and you haven’t the guts to keep him away, I’m through.”
“I’m not asking any woman to share poverty with me.”
“Oh, you’re not, eh?” said James. “Too proud, aren’t you? Well, by and large, there’s been too much pride in this house already, and I’m about sick of it!” And he stamped out again.
It was about two days later that James imparted to Margaret an astonishing bit of news.
“I’ve asked Mr. Steinfeldt up to dinner tomorrow night,” he said.
“Mr. Steinfeldt!” said Margaret weakly, and sat down. “Why on earth, James?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “He did me a favour when I’ll tell the world I needed it. And I had a talk with him to-day. We’ll have Warrington, too.”
“You’ve got something in your mind. What is it?”
“You leave that to me, my girl,” he told her.
“He’ll never go into the store.”
“Who said he was going into the store?” James demanded. “You get out that clover-leaf design I sent up the other day and attend to your job. I’ll attend to mine.”
Mr. Steinfeldt came. He drank the cocktail James shook up for him, praised the dinner, and even noticed the tablecloth.
“One of our patterns, isn’t it?” he asked. And James glowed.
“It is,” he said. “You can’t beat us for linens, Mr. Steinfeldt. Quality and looks.”
Mr. Steinfeldt sat back at last, and lighting a cigar, gazed with approval at Holly.
“Well, young lady!” he said. “And the last time I saw you, you were trying to make out you wanted to go to jail! And I didn’t believe you, did I? We put in that nice young man beside you, instead!” He eyed her shrewdly. “And because he was a gentleman, he said nothing and went, eh? It was a very fine thing to do.”
“A very fine thing,” said Holly unsteadily.
“And now,” said Mr. Steinfeldt, leaning back comfortably, “if I was a young lady, and a young gentleman did a thing like that for me, a nice personable young man too, I would think: ‘I better make up to him, somehow.’ What do you think?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want me to,” said Holly, her face scarlet.
Suddenly Margaret got up. “I think,” she said, “if you are ready for your coffee—”
But nobody else moved. James sat complacently back in his chair, and Warrington faced Mr. Steinfeldt, his hand closing over Holly’s as he spoke.
“That’s not the question, Holly,” he said steadily. “It it’s a question of wanting—” He released her hand again and addressed Mr. Steinfeldt. “I hadn’t expected the thing to be brought up like this,” he said, “but since it has—”
Mr. Steinfeldt beamed.
“Since it has, we might as well go through with it. Holly here knows I—care for her. I always have, since I’ve known her. I always will. There can never be anybody else. But I’m not in a position to marry, and I don’t know when I will be. She can do better, and I think she should.”
Mr. Steinfeldt looked at Margaret, standing outraged and disapproving at the end of the table.
“Sit down, Mrs. Cox,” he said. “Why hurry and spoil a good meal? I might get indigestion and forget what I came to say.”
But he did not forget what he had come to say. Leaning over the table now, his keen face alert, ashes over the front of his coat, he put his proposition. He didn’t think much of the bond business, either way; nothing in it for the salesman, and too little for the investor. Give him good common stock, every day in the week. But he knew a good house which needed a manager for the bond department, and he could land that job for Warrington, and would, on one condition.
“And that condition?” Warrington asked, none too steadily.
“They’d kinda like a married man,” said Mr. Steinfeldt, and, leaning back again, bit off the end of a fresh cigar.
There was silence in the room. James still sat back, faintly smiling. Honest James—wily James, crafty James. Margaret’s eyes being off him, he furtively took a bit of cake and gave it to the dog, underneath the tablecloth.
“Sounds like a nice easy condition to me,” he observed.
Warrington sat very still. Then he reached over and gently took Holly’s hand once more.
“I’ll take your position, Mr. Steinfeldt,” he said huskily, “if the young lady here will take your advice.”
And then Mr. Steinfeldt proved himself to be truly a diplomat. He removed his napkin, quality and looks, from its anchorage in a buttonhole of his waistcoat, pushed back his chair and rose.
“It’s a fine house you’ve got here, Cox,” he said. “Maybe Mrs. Cox and you would show me around a bit. After you, Mrs. Cox.”
They went out, and the door closed. Warrington watched them go, and then turned and took Holly in his arms.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, busin
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Copyright © 1928 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Copyright © 1926 by the Consolidated Magazine Corporation (The Red Book Magazine).
Cover design by Kathleen Lynch
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