He knelt by her side, moving her tired young head until it lay against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Jaqueline,” he said humbly, “I’ll be more careful. I didn’t realize what I was doing.”
“You’re the dearest person in the world,” murmured Jaqueline huskily, “but I want all of you and the best of you for me.”
He smoothed her hair over and over. For a few minutes they rested there silently, having attained a sort of Nirvana of peace and understanding. Then Jaqueline reluctantly raised her head as they were interrupted by the voice of Miss Clancy in the doorway.
“Oh, I beg your pardon.”
“What is it?”
“A boy’s here with some boxes. It’s C.O.D.”
Mather rose and followed Miss Clancy into the outer office.
“It’s fifty dollars.”
He searched his wallet—he had omitted to go to the bank that morning.
“Just a minute,” he said abstractedly. His mind was on Jaqueline, Jaqueline who seemed forlorn in her trouble, waiting for him in the other room. He walked into the corridor, and opening the door of “Clayton and Drake, Brokers” across the way, swung wide a low gate and went up to a man seated at a desk.
“Morning, Fred,” said Mather.
Drake, a little man of thirty with pince-nez and bald head, rose and shook hands.
“Morning, Jim. What can I do for you?”
“Why, a boy’s in my office with some stuff C.O.D. and I haven’t a cent. Can you let me have fifty till this afternoon?”
Drake looked closely at Mather. Then, slowly and startlingly, he shook his head—not up and down but from side to side.
“Sorry, Jim,” he answered stiffly, “I’ve made a rule never to make a personal loan to anybody on any conditions. I’ve seen it break up too many friendships.”
“What?”
Mather had come out of his abstraction now, and the monosyllable held an undisguised quality of shock. Then his natural tact acted automatically, springing to his aid and dictating his words though his brain was suddenly numb. His immediate instinct was to put Drake at ease in his refusal.
“Oh, I see.” He nodded his head as if in full agreement, as if he himself had often considered adopting just such a rule. “Oh, I see how you feel. Well—I just—I wouldn’t have you break a rule like that for anything. It’s probably a good thing.”
They talked for a minute longer. Drake justified his position easily; he had evidently rehearsed the part a great deal. He treated Mather to an exquisitely frank smile.
Mather went politely back to his office leaving Drake under the impression that the latter was the most tactful man in the city. Mather knew how to leave people with that impression. But when he entered his own office and saw his wife staring dismally out the window into the sunshine he clinched his hands, and his mouth moved in an unfamiliar shape.
“All right, Jack,” he said slowly, “I guess you’re right about most things, and I’m wrong as hell.”
III
During the next three months Mather thought back through many years. He had had an unusually happy life. Those frictions between man and man, between man and society, which harden most of us into a rough and cynical quarrelling trim, had been conspicuous by their infrequency in his life. It had never occurred to him before that he had paid a price for this immunity, but now he perceived how here and there, and constantly, he had taken the rough side of the road to avoid enmity or argument, or even question.
There was, for instance, much money that he had lent privately, about thirteen hundred dollars in all, which he realized, in his new enlightenment, he would never see again. It had taken Jaqueline’s harder, feminine intelligence to know this. It was only now when he owed it to Jaqueline to have money in the bank that he missed these loans at all.
He realized too the truth of her assertions that he was continually doing favors—a little something here, a little something there; the sum total, in time and energy expended, was appalling. It had pleased him to do the favors. He reacted warmly to being thought well of, but he wondered now if he had not been merely indulging a selfish vanity of his own. In suspecting this, he was, as usual, not quite fair to himself. The truth was that Mather was essentially and enormously romantic.
He decided that these expenditures of himself made him tired at night, less efficient in his work, and less of a prop to Jaqueline, who, as the months passed, grew more heavy and bored, and sat through the long summer afternoons on the screened veranda waiting for his step at the end of the walk.
Lest that step falter, Mather gave up many things—among them the presidency of his college alumni association. He let slip other labors less prized. When he was put on a committee, men had a habit of electing him chairman and retiring into a dim background, where they were inconveniently hard to find. He was done with such things now. Also he avoided those who were prone to ask favors—fleeing a certain eager look that would be turned on him from some group at his club.
The change in him came slowly. He was not exceptionally unworldly—under other circumstances Drake’s refusal of money would not have surprised him. Had it come to him as a story he would scarcely have given it a thought. But it had broken in with harsh abruptness upon a situation existing in his own mind, and the shock had given it a powerful and literal significance.
It was mid-August now, and the last of a baking week. The curtains of his wide-open office windows had scarcely rippled all the day, but lay like sails becalmed in warm juxtaposition with the smothering screens. Mather was worried—Jaqueline had overtired herself, and was paying for
