To Him That Hath

When Helen appeared at the door, he was for an instant powerless to move, so thrilled was he with his love for her. She came across the room with a happy smile, her hand held out. He strode toward her, and as he caught her hand his blood swept through him in a warm wave.

"I'm so glad to see you again!" she cried, and a little laugh told him how sincere her joy was.

A sudden desire struggled to tell her, truly, how great was his gladness, and its kind, at seeing her again; and fighting the desire back made him dizzy. "And I to see you!" he said.

"It's been – let's see – five months since I've seen you, and – "

"Five months and four days," the desire within David corrected.

"And four days," she accepted, with a laugh. "And there've been so many things during that time I've wanted to talk with you about. But how are you?"

She moved near a window. She was full of spirits this day. The out-door life from which she had just come, the wind, the sun, the water, were blowing and shining and rippling within her. David, in analysing his love for her, had told himself he loved her because of her able mind, her nobility of soul, her feeling of responsibility toward life. Had he analysed further he would have found that her lighter qualities were equally responsible for his love – her sense of humour, the freshness of her spirits, her joy in the pleasures of life. She had never shown him this lighter side with more freedom than now – not even during the summer seven years before when for two weeks they had been comrades; – and David, yesterday forgotten, yielded to her mood.

He frankly looked her over. She wore a tailor-made suit of a rich brown, that had captured some of the warm glow of sun-lit autumn, and a little brown hat to match on which bloomed a single red rose. Her face had the clear fresh brown of six months' sun, and the sun's sparkle, stored in her deep eyes, beamed joyously from them. She was a long vacation epitomised, idealised.

"May I say," he remarked at length, with the daring of her own free spirit, "that you are looking very well?"

For her part, she had been making a like survey of him. His tall figure, which had regained its old erectness, was enveloped in clothes that fit and set it off; and his clean-lined face, whose wanness had been driven away by the life in hers, looked distinguished against the background of the dark-green window hangings.

"You may," she returned, "if you will permit me to say the same of you."

"Of me? Oh, no. I'm an old man," he said exultantly. "Do you know how old I am?" He touched his head. "See! The gray hairs!"

"Yes – at least a dozen," she said gravely. "Such an old man!"

"Thirty-one! Isn't it awful?"

"Twenty-eight – that's worse for a woman!"

They looked at each other solemnly for a moment. Then she broke into a laugh that had the music of summer, and he joined her.

Her face became more serious, but all the sparkle remained in it. "There are so many things I want to talk over with you. One is a check my father has just given me. Every autumn he gives me a sum to spend on philanthropic purposes just as I see fit – he never asks me about it. The check's for twenty thousand dollars. I thought you might have some suggestions as to what to do with it – something in line with what we have often talked about. But we'll speak of that and some other things later. First of all, have you heard anything from your book?"

"Not a word."

"You will – and favourably, I am sure. I want to say again what I've written – I think it's splendid as a piece of literary work and splendid as a work of serious significance. And Uncle Henry is just as enthusiastic as I am."

David reddened with pleasure, and his enthusiasm, dead for over a month now, began to warm with new life. Her eyes were looking straight into his own, and the love that had several times urged him beyond the limits of discretion, now pressed him again – and again all his strength was required to hold it silent.

"But come! – we were to walk, you know," she said, smiling lightly. "I'll prove that I'm the better walker."

During their silent passage through the halls to the Mission door, it returned to him that she was the daughter of the man who, by an even-toned word, had destroyed one of his hopes and utterly destroyed all of Rogers's. His high spirit, which had been but a weaker reflection of her own, faded from his face, leaving it tired and drawn; and she, looking up at him, saw the striking change.

"Why, have you been ill?" she exclaimed.

A grim little smile raised the corners of his mouth. "No."

"Then you've been working too hard. What have you been doing since you finished your book?"

He briefly told of his discharge and his acceptance of a position with Rogers – and while he spoke his refluent bitterness tempted him to go on and tell her father's act of yesterday.

"But this was over a month ago," she said when he had ended. "Have the expected developments in Mr. Rogers's business taken place?"

"Tell her all," Temptation ordered. He resisted this command, and then Temptation approached him more guilefully. "Tell her all, only give no names but yours and Rogers, and no clues that would enable her to identify her father." This appealed to David's bitterness, and instantly he began.

He told her Rogers's true story, which of course he had as yet not done – of Rogers's fight, so like his own – of Rogers's deception of the world for ten years that he might live honestly – of his loneliness during that time, his fears, his secret kindnesses – of the first stages of the real estate deal – of the vast meaning of success to Rogers, and of its meaning to himself – and finally of the happenings of the day before. "So you see," he ended, "this Mr. A. has utterly destroyed Mr. Rogers, in cold blood, merely that he might increase the profits of his company."

She had followed him with tensest interest, and indignation's flame in cheek and eye had grown higher and higher.

"Do you mean to say," she demanded, slowly, "that any man would do such a thing as that?"

"Yes – and a most respected citizen."

"It was heartless!" she burst out hotly. "That man would do anything!"

It filled David with grim joy to hear her pass such judgment upon her own father. At that moment he was untroubled by a single thought as to whether he had acted honourably to betray her into pronouncing judgment.

"That man should be exposed!" she went on. "Honourable business men should ostracise him. Won't you tell me his name? Perhaps my father can do something."

An ironic laugh leaped into David's throat. He checked it. "No, I cannot tell his name."

Her indignation against the destroyer gave way to sympathy for the destroyed. She saw Rogers defeated, despairing, utterly without chance. They came to David's street and her sympathy drew her into it.

"I'm so sorry for him!" she burst out. "So sorry! I wish I could do something. I'd like to go in and tell him what I feel – if you think he wouldn't mind that from a stranger."

"I'm afraid he would," said David, grimly.

They fell silent. As they drew to within a block of the house, David saw the Mayor of Avenue A, whom he had left with Rogers, come down the steps and start toward them, which was also toward the café. The Mayor recognised them instantly, and a smile began to shine on his pink face. He had long been wanting to meet Helen, and now the chance was his. He came up, his overcoat spread wide at the demand of his vest, and, pausing, took off his hat with his best ball-room flourish.

"I've heard a great deal about you through Mr. Aldrich," Helen said, when David had introduced them. "I'm very happy to meet you."

"And I'm happy to meet you, miss," he returned, bowing, making a graceful sweep with his hat, and vigorously shaking the hand she had given him. "And me, I've heard about you a lot – and that long before I saw Mr. Aldrich.

"From St. Christopher's, I suppose."

"Yes, there – and elsewhere," said the Mayor, smiling gallantly. "On the society pages. I've seen lots o' pieces about you, and seen your picture there among the beauties of society."

The Mayor expected to see her blush with gratification and ask for more – as women always did. But she quickly shifted to another subject.

"Mr. Aldrich has just been telling me of a business affair you, he and Mr. Rogers have been engaged in."

"Oh, has he!"

The Mayor, in the agreeable experience of meeting Helen, had forgotten there was such a person as her father. But he was the gallant no longer. His feet spread apart, his face grew stern, and he looked Helen squarely in the eyes.

"Well," he demanded, " – and what do you think o' your father now?"

"My father?" she said blankly.

David caught his arm. "Keep still, Hoffman!" he cried roughly.

The Mayor looked from one to the other in astonishment. "What," he cried, "d'you mean you hadn't told her it was her father?"

The colour of summer faded slowly from Helen's face, and a hand reached out and caught a stoop railing. Her eyes turned piercingly, appealingly, to David. After a moment she whispered, "My father – was that man?"

He nodded.

Her head sank slowly upon her breast, and for moment after moment she stood motionless, silent.

The Mayor when he had thought of her as an instrument to strike her father, had not thought the instrument itself might be pained. Filled with contrition, he stammered: "Please, Miss, I'm sorry – I didn't mean to hurt you."

She did not answer; she seemed not to have heard. A moment later she lifted a gray, drawn face to David.

"Mr. Aldrich," she said tremulously, "will you please put me in a cab?"

In the cab she sat with the same stricken look upon her face. She had, as David had once said to the Mayor, always regarded her father as a man of highest honour. She had never felt concern in his business affairs, or any business affairs, despite the fact that her interests overreached in so many directions the usual interests of women, and despite the fact that her heart was in various material conditions which business had created and which business could relieve.

Seen from the intimate view-point of the home, her father was generous and kind. She had heard of the reports that circulated in the distant land of business, and she had glanced at some of the articles that had appeared in years past in magazines and newspapers, and she knew that stories were at this time current. Her conception of her father had given the silent lie to all these reports. She believed they sprang from jealousy, or false information, or a distorted view. They had troubled her little, save to make her indignant that her father was so maligned; and even this indignation had been tempered with philosophic mildness, for she had remembered that it had ever been a common fate of men of superior purpose, or superior parts, or superior fortune, to be misunderstood and to be hated.

But, all of a sudden, her conception of her father was shattered. This thing he had indubitably done was certainly not without the legal law, and perhaps not wholly without the cold lines of the moral – but it was hard-hearted, brutal. "The man who would do that would do anything," she had said to David; and all the way home in the cab this thought kept ringing through her consciousness, and kept ringing for days afterwards. It led logically and immediately to the dread question: "After all, may not these other stories be true?"

Helen did not belong to that easy-conscienced class who can eliminate unpleasantness by closing their eyes against it. She had to face her question with open vision – learn what truth was in it. She secured all she could find in print about her father and read it behind the locked door of her room. There was case after case in which her father, by skilful breaking of the law, or skilful compliance with it, or complete disregard of moral rights, had moved relentlessly, irresistibly, to his ends over all who had opposed him. The picture these cases drew was of a man it sickened her daughter-love to look upon – a man who was truly, as the articles frequently called him, an "industrial brigand," and whose vast fortune was the "loot of a master bandit."

The articles seemed woven of fact, but she could not accept them unsubstantiated. She must know the truth – beyond a single doubt. At the same time, she, her father's daughter, could not go to the men he had wronged, demanding proof. At length she thought of her Uncle Henry, whom she loved and trusted, and whom she knew to be intimately acquainted with her father's career.

To him she went one night and opened her fears. "Are these things true?" she asked.

And he said: "They are true."

She went away, grief-burdened, feeling that the whole structure of her life was tottering. And two questions that before had been vaguely rising, became big, sharp, insistent: What should be her attitude toward her father, whom she loved? And what should be her attitude toward his fortune, which she shared?

CHAPTER II

DAVID SEES THE FACE OF FORTUNE

When David had handed Helen into the cab, she had not spoken to him, had not even said, "Thank you," and had rolled away without giving him so much as a backward glance. He now felt it had been brutal, dishonourable, to trap her into denouncing her father and then to strike her with her father's guilt. He was certain she was deeply offended, and this conviction grew as day after day passed without a word from her.

But there were other things to be thought of during these days. There was his future – upon which, uncertain as it was, he saw that Lillian Drew was to be a parasite; for she had made another call (while Kate was out of the office; he was thankful for that) and had carried away the larger fraction of his small store of money. He was again workless – again at the base of that high, smooth wall which before he had been able to surmount only with, as it were, his last gasping effort.

What he should do, he had no idea. But his own future he thrust aside as being a less pressing problem than Rogers's future and Rogers's present. As Rogers had predicted, the fact that he was Red Thorpe quickly reached the ears of his clients, and they all lost no time in withdrawing their property from his charge. The owner who had forced David's dismissal as janitor demanded with the same delicacy that Rogers should vacate the rooms he occupied; but Rogers had a lease and, moreover, had paid a month's rent in advance, so they and their belongings were not tumbled into the street.

These days were for Rogers solid blackness. David had promised to share with him, but he saw that there was doubt of David's having anything to share. Even if David did, his bitter mood now looked upon that portion as charity, and little more agreeable to his pride than public charity – which he saw as a near-looming, shame-laden spectre, feared more than death. That he who had had the brains to achieve independence, who had been on the verge of fortune, should have been crushed to his present extremity – this filled him with wild revolt. Kate, with a subdued gentleness that begged to serve; Tom, with his alert willingness; David, with his constant presence and consideration; the Mayor, with his ever-ready vituperation and bluff words of hope that rang hollow; – they all tried to lift the draping blackness from about him – and failed, because they had nothing but blackness to hang in its place.

But some definite plan for the future had to be made, and Rogers himself made it. Since Colorado was not for him, he would, as soon as his month here was ended, secure as cheap a room as he could find and try to stretch his small funds to reach that final day when he would have no need of more.

Kate's father fell with the rest of the Rogers regime, and from the basement they moved into a couple of cheap rooms a few blocks away. David had often considered the relation between Kate and her father: aside from keeping him alive Kate was of no service to him – he was a terrible drag on her; if they could be separated, with his maintenance secured, he would be no worse off and she would be far better. David now talked the matter over with Rogers; together they talked it over with Kate, who finally yielded; and David enlisted the interest of Dr. Franklin in behalf of getting old Jimmie into an institution for inebriates.

There was little for Kate to do in Rogers's office, but she insisted on remaining and remaining without salary. "It's because of me all this happened – you may need me – I'm going to stay," she said to Rogers. "I've still got most of my last month's wages – two or three weeks will be soon enough to get a job." And nothing Rogers urged could move her.

Tom begged to be allowed to go to work, but David prevailed on him to continue in school. "Something good will surely turn up," David said to the boy. But days went and nothing arose. David was on the point of yielding to Tom, when into the general gloom there shot, for him, a bright shaft of hope. Ten days after he had put Helen into the cab a letter came to him addressed in her handwriting. He hardly dared open it, for he expected reproof – delicately conveyed, of course, but still reproof. When he drew the letter from its envelope an enclosure fell unheeded to the floor. Instead of censure he found this:

"It seems your address was not on your manuscript, so Mr. Osborne has sent the enclosed letter to you in care of me. I can hardly refrain from opening it. I feel certain there is good news in it. I congratulate you in advance!

"You know how interested I am, so I know you'll come and tell me all about it just as soon as you learn the book's fate. You'll find me in almost any time."

David picked up the envelope – stamped in one corner with "William Osborne & Co," a name he had once worshipped from afar off – ripped it open and read the following, signed by Mr. Osborne himself:

"We have been greatly interested in your story. If you will call at your convenience I shall be glad to talk with you about it."

David stared at the three type-written lines. The letter was not an acceptance – but then neither was it a rejection. A wild hope leaped up within him. Could it be here was a ladder up the unseizable wall? Could it be the success he had failed of five years before was at last about to be won? He dared not let himself be swept to these dizzy heights; he knew how far it was to the ground. So he told himself it could not be possible. Still, was there not a chance?

He slipped away without hinting of his hope to Rogers – there would be time for telling later, if anything was to tell – and at ten o'clock reached a little five-story brick building off Union Square that was the home of William Osborne & Co. At first he had not the courage to enter. He remembered, as he walked on, a manuscript novel he had left here in the long ago – and it came back to him that this was the very manuscript he had been working over on that day, now more than five years gone, when Morton's death had summoned him to St. Christopher's.

When he reached the door again he drove himself in and was swung to the top floor in a little creaking elevator, and before his courage had time to recede he was within a railed-off square in a large room and had given his name to a boy to be carried to Mr. Osborne. In a moment the boy returned and led him across the room, filled with sub-editors, manuscript readers and stenographers, and ushered him into a small private office. Here at a desk sat a white-haired man chatting with two visitors.

The white-haired man rose as David entered and smiled a kindly, spectacled smile. "I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Aldrich. If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll be right with you."

David sat down in the chair Mr. Osborne indicated and waited with pulsing suspense for the two men to go. There, on one corner of Mr. Osborne's desk, which was littered with letters, manuscripts and magazine page-proofs, he saw his book. He felt, as he waited, almost as he had felt five years before during the suffocating minutes between the return of the jury with its verdict and the verdict's reading. The verdict on the book was ready. What was it to be?

At length the two men went away. Mr. Osborne turned from the door and came toward David, smiling cordially, his hand outstretched.

"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Aldrich!" he said heartily.

David rose and put a nerveless hand into Mr. Osborne's. "You mean – you like it?"

"Indeed I do! If you and I can come to an agreement, we shall be proud to publish it."

David gazed swimmingly at him. There was a whirling, a bubbling, within him – but he managed to say with fair control: "It's hardly necessary to tell an old publisher how happy a new author is to hear that."

Mr. Osborne sat down and David automatically did likewise.

"You, Mr. Aldrich, have particular reason to feel happy. We print a great many well-written, dramatic stories – stories which are just that, and no more. That, of course, is a great deal. But when a book, without impairment to its dramatic and artistic quality, leaves a profound impression regarding some aspect of life – that book has an element of bigness that the other stories lack. Mr. Aldrich, yours is such a story."

David felt he was reeling off his chair. "Yes?" he said.

Mr. Osborne went on to praise the book in detail. After a time he proposed terms. David took in hardly a word of the offer; his mind was over-running with his success, his praise. But he accepted the terms instantly.

This settled, Mr. Osborne picked up several yellowed type-written sheets from his disordered desk. "By the way, are you the David Aldrich that submitted us a novel five or six years ago called 'The Master Knot?'"

"Yes," said David.

"I thought you might be interested in the readers' opinions on that story, so I had them brought in."

He handed the sheets to David, and when he saw David had glanced them through, he remarked: "You see they all amount to the same. 'The author knows how to write, but he does not know life.'" He gazed steadily at David through the kindly spectacles. "Since then, Mr. Aldrich, you have come to know life."

"I think I have." David strained to keep his voice natural.

"Yes, you have come to know life – to feel it." He paused, and considered within himself. For all his warmth, there had been in his tone and manner, caution, reserve. Suddenly these fell away, and he radiated enthusiasm.

"I try never to raise false hopes in a young author," he cried, "but I've got to say more than I've said. Really, I think I've made what a publisher is always looking for, hoping for – a great find, a real writer! You're going to do big things!"

David dared not respond; he knew his voice would not be steady.

"Yes – big things," Mr. Osborne repeated. "But here's another point I wanted to speak of. We can use several short stories from you in our magazine. If you have any, or will write some, that are anywhere near as good as the book, I can guarantee acceptance."

It was a moment before David could trust himself to speak. "I have none, but I should like to write some." Then he suddenly remembered he had not the money to carry him through the period that must elapse before the stories could be written and paid for. "But I fear I'm not in a position to write them just now," he added.

Mr. Osborne had had thirty years' experience with the impecuniosity of authors. "Money?" he queried.

There was no taking offence at the friendly way he asked this. "Yes," David confessed.

"I think we can solve that difficulty. I don't know how the book there is going to sell. I was a publisher before you were born, but after all my experience I have to regard the commercial side of publishing as pretty much of a gambling game. Critically, your book is certain of great success. Financially – I don't know. It may win in a large way; I hope so. But you are sure of at least a moderate sale. Suppose, then, I make you a small advance on your royalty. Say – let's see – well, three hundred. Will that do?"

David felt, as he had felt since he had heard his verdict, that to venture beyond a monosyllable would be to explode. He swallowed. "Yes," he said.

"Very well, then. Do you prefer check or cash?"

"Cash."

Ten minutes later David entered the street, three hundred dollars in his pocket, his heart wild with joy, hope. He wanted to run, to shout, to fly. His glowing face was the visage of triumph.