Chapter 11

IN WHICH SUNDRY PEOPLE MAKE GREAT DISCOVERIES

“There were many private panics in Pointview. It was my privilege to observe, under calm exteriors, a raging fever of excitement––characters going bankrupt, collectors wandering in a fruitless quest. One little rill that flowed into the swift river of national trouble issued from the bosom of my clerk, Mr. ‘Cub’ Sayles. It had been one of the most placid bosoms in Pointview. Now it was in the midst of what I have since referred to as the ‘Violet and Supper Panic of 1907.’

“Cub was a quiet, hard-working, serious-minded boy whose mother moved in the higher circles of Boston. He had a low, pleasant voice, a touch of Harry’s dialect, and a sad face. He had asked for a higher salary, and I had asked for information.

“‘You see every time I go to call on my girl I have to take a bunch of violets or a two-pound box of candy,’ he said. ‘Then if we go to the theater her chaperon has to be with us––don’t you know? She’s a stout lady who complains of faintness before the play ends, and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It’s really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have to pawn my diamond ring.’

“‘All that isn’t honest,’ I said. ‘You’re getting her favor under false pretenses. You’re trying to make her believe that you are a sort of aristocrat with lots of money. Why don’t you tell her the truth––that you can’t afford violets, that the two-pound box is a burden that is breaking your back, and that every theater-supper sends you to the pawnbroker’s?’

“‘I can’t––she would throw me over,’ he explained. ‘The girls expect those things. They like to show and talk about them––don’t you know? It’s the fashion. Our best young men do it, sir.’

“‘Well, if you are willing to give up your honor for a lady’s smile you won’t do for me,’ I said. ‘You must not only tell the truth, but live it. You must be just what you are––a poor boy working for twenty dollars a week. If the girl doesn’t like it she’s unfit to associate with honest men. If you don’t like it I don’t like you.’

“Perspiration had begun to dampen the brow of Cub.

“‘I––I hadn’t seen it in that light, sir,’ he said. ‘But what am I to do, sir? I am heavily indebted to my tailor.’

“‘What! Haven’t you paid for those lovely garments?’

“‘I had them charged, sir,’ Cub sadly answered. ‘My mother sent me a hundred dollars to pay for them, but I loaned it to Roger Daniels. I should be much obliged, sir, if you would collect it for me.’

“I went to Roger and made him pay the debt. He paid it in a curious way––by going to his tailor and buying a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes for Cub and having them charged. It was compounding a felony, but my client was satisfied and Roger was grateful. He began to have some regard for me. Not every lawyer had been able to make him pay. Within a day or so he came to consult me about a mortgage on his patrimony.

“Roger had married and settled down immediately after his remarkable cruise. He had kept his party in ignorance of his financial troubles and returned with his reputation as an aristocrat firmly established. The gay young Bessie Runnymede had accepted him at once. He had become junior partner in a firm of brokers and had rented a handsome residence in Pointview.

“So they began their little play with ladies, lords, and gentlemen in the cast, and with a country-house, a tandem, a crested limousine, and a racing launch for scenery. But Roger had what is known as a bad season. Well, you know, the moving-picture shows had got such a hold on the public.

“At first we concluded that he must have made another lucky play in the market. Then, after six months or so, bills against Roger began to arrive for collection from sundry department stores in the city. He was a good fellow and had plausible excuses, and I declined to press payment and returned the bills.

“One day, some eight months after the wedding, an urgent telegram from Roger brought me to New York. I found the young man in his office, with his wife at his side. They were both in tears. I sat down with them, and he told me this story:

“‘The fact is, I’m a thief,’ he began. ‘I have confessed the truth to my partners. Since my marriage I have taken about twenty thousand dollars––needed every cent of it to keep going. The fact is, I expected to make a killing in the market and return the money––had inside information––but everything went wrong. Yesterday I was cleaned out.

“‘I went home late in the evening. I hoped that my wife would be in bed, but she was waiting for me. She said that I looked sick, and wanted to know what was the matter. I told her that I had a headache, and got into bed as soon as possible; but I couldn’t sleep. Long after midnight my wife rose and turned on the light and came to my bed and said that she knew I was troubled about something––that she had seen it in my face for weeks. She begged that I would let her help me bear it. Then I told her the truth, and discovered––for I didn’t know her before––one of the noblest women in the world. She hid her face in the pillow, and then I had a bad moment.

“‘“Why did you do it?” she asked as soon as she could speak.

“‘And I said: “We’ve been foolish––trying to keep up with Harry and the rest of them. It was my fault. I ought to have told you that I couldn’t go the pace.”

“‘She saw the truth in a flash, and the old-fashioned woman in her got to work.

“‘“Roger, get up and dress yourself,” said she. “We will go and see your partners to-night. We will go together, for I am as guilty as you. We will tell them the truth and beg for time. Maybe we can get the money.”

“‘We started in our motor-car about one o’clock for the city, on dark and muddy roads. Some ten miles out we broke an axle and left car and driver and went on afoot. My wife wouldn’t wait. No trains were running. But we could get a trolley five miles down the road. So we went on in the dark and silence. I put my arm around her, and not a word passed between us for an hour or so. I don’t know what she was thinking of, but I was trying to count my follies. It began to rain, and I felt sorry for Bess, and took off my coat and threw it over her.’

“‘“I don’t mind the rain,” she said. “It will cool me.”

“‘We were a sight when we got to the trolley, and just before daylight we rang the bell of the senior partner. Our weariness and muddy shoes and rain-soaked garments were a help to us. They touched his heart, sir. Anyhow, he gave me a week of grace in which to make good. I must get the money somehow, and I want your advice about it.’

“‘I’m glad of one part of it all,’ I said––‘that you have discovered each other and learned that you are human beings of a pretty good sort. I’ve much more respect for both of you than I ever had before.’

“He looked at me in surprise.

“‘Oh, you are a better man than you were three months ago!’ I answered him. ‘You happen to have run against the law, and it’s shocked and frightened you. But you are improving. Long ago you began to incur debts which you couldn’t pay, and you must have known that you couldn’t pay them. In that manner you became possessed of a large sum of money belonging to other people. It was used not for necessities, but to maintain a foolish display. That is the most heartless kind of fraud. I’ve much more respect for you now that you see your fault and confess it. I’m convinced now that you have a conscience, and that you will be likely to make some use of it in the future. I’m particularly grateful to your wife. She has shown me that she is just a woman, and not an angel. I don’t believe that it was at all necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say that you loved her.’

“‘It is true, Roger,’ said the girl as she broke down again.

“‘I did it all to please you, dear,’ the boy answered, in his effort to comfort her.

“‘And it did please me,’ she said, brokenly, ‘but I know that I should have been better pleased if––’

“She hesitated, and I expressed her thought for her:

“‘If he had centralized on manhood. There is something sweeter than violets and grander than fine raiment in a sort of character that a boy should offer to the girl he loves.’

“They were both convinced. It was easy to see that now, and I promised to do what I could for them.

“I got a schedule of the young man’s debts and found that he owed, among other debts, six thousand dollars to sundry shops and department stores in New York––the purchases of his wife in the eight months of their wedded life. I asked her how it could have happened.

“‘He opened accounts for me and said I could buy what I wanted, and you know it is so easy to say “Charge it,’” was her answer. ‘Every one has accounts these days, and they tempt you to buy more than you need.’

“‘It is true. Credit is the latest ally of the devil. It is the great tempter. It is responsible for half the extravagance of modern life. The two words ‘charge it’ have done more harm than any others in the language. They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats. They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of his fortune.

“Bessie’s bank-account was also overdrawn. That reminds me of a new sinner––the bank-check. It is so easy to draw a check––and, then, somehow, it’s only a piece of paper. You let it go without a pang while you would be very thoughtful if you were counting out the money and parting with it.

“The check is another way of saying ‘Charge it.’

“That evening I went to see Harry.”