LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

anyone but your father."

      Jim nodded. "I didn't realize then that my work would take me away from you. You know a man's job is very important, Mama. I want to get someone to take care of you while I build bridges, for I've got to build them. I can send you money but I want a man to be looking out for you."

      Mr. Dennis' eyes twinkled but he waited.

      "It's only a year since your father died. I never could care for anyone else," said Mrs. Manning.

      "It's ten years since Mrs. Dennis and the babies died," said Dennis. "I never could love anyone as I did the three of them. But you and I suit each other comfortably, Mrs. Manning. We'd be a great comfort to each other and we can do some good things for Still Jim. You must try to give him his chance. It's a sad boyhood he's having, Mrs. Manning. Let's give him the chance he can't have unless you marry me."

      Mrs. Manning looked at Jim. His face still was eager but there were dark rings around his eyes that came from nerve strain. He was too thin and she saw for the first time that his shoulders were rounding. Mr. Dennis followed up his advantage.

      "Look at his hands, Mrs. Manning. Hard work has knocked them up too much for his age. He should have his chance to play if he's to do good body and brain work later. Let's give his father's son a chance! Don't you think his father would approve?"

      "Oh, but I'm going to keep on working and supporting myself!" cried Jim. "I just wanted you to look out for Mama."

      "Well, I guess not!" cried Mrs. Manning, vehemently. "You'll come straight out of that foundation tomorrow. You are going to have your chance. Oh, Jim dear! I hadn't realized how little happiness you've been having!"

      Jim shook his head. "I can support myself."

      Mrs. Manning sniffed. "How can you be a good engineer out in that awful rough country unless you have the best kind of a physical foundation? Use sense, Jimmy."

      This was a master stroke. Jim wavered, then caught his left ankle in his hand and hopped about like a happy frog.

      "Gee whiz!" he cried. "I'll enter the try-out squad the first thing. I bet I can make school quarter back."

      Mr. Dennis cut in neatly. "It might just as well take place tomorrow and the three of us can take a month at the seashore. I'll bet Jim has sighed for the old swimming hole lately."

      The little widow looked at Mr. Dennis long and keenly, then she rose and held out her hand while she said very deliberately:

      "You are a good man, Michael Dennis. I thank you for me and mine and I'll be a comfort to you as you are being to me. I'm not going to pretend I'd do this if it wasn't for Jim. I can't love you, but you love Jim and that's enough for me."

      And so Jim was given his chance.

      He spent the rest of the summer at the shore and entered school in the fall with a new interest. With the unexpected lift of the money burden from his shoulders, Jim began to make up for his lost play. Football and track work, debating societies and glee-clubs straightened his round shoulders and found him friends. Most important of all, he ceased to brood for a time over his Exham problems.

      Jim's stepfather, whom the boy called Uncle Denny, took a pride and interest in the boy that sometimes brought the tears to his mother's eyes. It seemed to her that the warm-hearted Irishman gave to Jim all the love that the death of his family had left unsatisfied. And Jim, in his undemonstrative way, returned Mr. Dennis' affection. He shared with his Uncle Denny his growing ideals on engineering. He rehearsed his debating society speeches on his Uncle Denny, who endured them with enthusiasm. He and his Uncle Denny worked out some marvelous football tactics when Jim as a senior in the high school became captain of the school team. Often of an evening Jim's mother would come upon the two in the library, flat on their backs before the grate in a companionship that needed and found no words.

      At such times she would say, "Michael, you didn't marry me. You married Jim."

      And Dennis would look up at her with a smile of understanding that she returned.

      When Jim was a freshman in Columbia, he acquired a chum. It was not a chum who took the place of Phil Chadwick. Nothing in after life ever fills the hollow left by the first friendship of childhood and Phil was hallowed in Jim's memory along with all the beauties of the swimming hole and the quiet elms around the old Exham mansions.

      But Jim's new chum gave him his first opportunity at hero-worship, which is an essential step in a boy's growth. The young man's name was George Saradokis. His mates called him Sara. His mother was a Franco-American, his father was a Greek, a real estate man in the Greek section of New York. Sara confided to Jim, early in their acquaintance, that his father was the disinherited son of a nobleman and that he, the grandson, would be his grandfather's heir. The glamour of this possible inheritance did not detract at all from the romance of the new friendship in Jim's credulous young eyes.

      Sara was halfback on the freshman football team, while Jim played quarterback. The two were of a height, six feet, but Jim still was slender. Sara was broad and heavy. He was very Greek—that is, modern Greek, which has little racially or temperamentally in common with the ancient Greek. He was a brilliant student, yet of a commerciality of mind that equalled that of any Jewish student in the class.

      Both the boys were good trackmen. Both were good students. Both were planning to be engineers. But, temperamentally, they were as far apart as the two countries whence came their father's stock.

      Uncle Denny did not approve fully of Saradokis, but finally he decided that it was good for Jim to overcome some of his New England prejudice against the immigrant class and he encouraged the young Greek to come to the house.

      It was when Jim was a freshman, too, that Penelope came from Colorado to live with her Uncle Denny. Her father, Uncle Denny's brother, had married a little Scotch girl and they had made a bare living from a small mine, up in the mountains, until a fatal attack of pneumonia claimed them both in a single month. Penelope stayed on at a girl's school in Denver for a year. Then, Jim's mother urging it, Mr. Dennis sent for her. Jim, absorbed in the intricate business of being a freshman, did not give much heed to the preparations for her coming.

      One spring evening he sauntered into the library to wait for the dinner bell. As he strolled over to the fireplace, he saw a slender young girl sitting in the Morris chair.

      "Oh, hello!" said Jim.

      "Hello!" said the young girl, rising.

      The two calmly eyed each other. Jim saw a graceful girl, three or four years younger than himself, with a great braid of chestnut hair hanging over one shoulder. She had a round face that ended in a pointed chin, a generous mouth, a straight little nose and a rich glow of color in her cheeks. These details Jim noted only casually, for his attention was focused almost immediately on her eyes. For years after, whenever Jim thought of Penelope, he thought of a halo of chestnut hair about eyes of a deep hazel; eyes that were large, almost too large, for the little round face; eyes that were steady and clear and black sometimes with feeling or with a fleeting shadow of melancholy that did not belong to her happy youth.

      Penelope saw a tall lad in a carefully dressed Norfolk suit. He had a long, thin, tanned face, with a thick mop of soft hair falling across his forehead, a clear gaze and a flashing, wistful, fascinatingly sweet smile as he repeated:

      "Hello, Penelope!"

      "Hello, Still Jim!" replied the girl, while her round cheeks showed dimples that for a moment made Jim forget her eyes.

      "Uncle Denny's been busy, I see," said Jim.

      Then he was speechless. He had not reached the "girl stage" as yet. Penelope was not disturbed. She continued to look Jim over, almost unblinkingly. Then Jim, to his own astonishment, suddenly found his tongue.

      "I'm glad you've come," he said abruptly. "I'm going to think a lot of you, I can see that."

      He held out his hand and Penelope slipped her slender fingers into his hard young fists. Jim did not let the little hand go for a minute. The two

Скачать книгу