The Grafters - Lynde Francis

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can't say."

      "You needn't draw another breath of uncertainty on that score," was the curt rejoinder. "He is a demagogue, pure and unadulterated."

      Loring did not attempt to refute the charge.

      "Are he and his party likely to win?" he asked.

      "God knows," said Kent. "We have had so many lightning transformations in politics in the State that nothing is impossible."

      "I'd like to know," was Loring's comment. "It might make some difference to me, personally."

      "To you?" said Kent, inquiringly. "That reminds me: I haven't given you a chance to say ten words about yourself."

      "The chance hasn't been lacking. But my business out here is—well, it isn't exactly a Star Chamber matter, but I'm under promise in a way not to talk about it until I have had a conference with our people at the capital. I'll write you about it in a few days."

      They were ascending the steps at the end of the passenger platform again, and Loring broke away from the political and personal entanglement to give Kent one more opportunity to hear his word of negative comfort.

      "We dug up the field of recollection pretty thoroughly in our after-dinner séance in your rooms, David, but I noticed there was one corner of it you left undisturbed. Was there any good reason?"

      Kent made no show of misunderstanding.

      "There was the excellent reason which must have been apparent to you before you had been an hour in Gaston. I've made my shot, and missed."

      Loring entered the breach with his shield held well to the fore. He was the last man in the world to assault a friend's confidence recklessly.

      "I thought a good while ago, and I still think, that you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill, David. Elinor Brentwood is a true woman in every inch of her. She is as much above caring for false notions of caste as you ought to be."

      "I know her nobility: which is all the more reason why I shouldn't take advantage of it. We may scoff at the social inequalities as much as we please, but we can't laugh them out of court. As between a young woman who is an heiress in her own right, and a briefless lawyer, there are differences which a decent man is bound to efface. And I haven't been able."

      "Does Miss Brentwood know?"

      "She knows nothing at all. I was unwilling to entangle her, even with a confidence."

      "The more fool you," said Loring, bluntly. "You call yourself a lawyer, and you have not yet learned one of the first principles of common justice, which is that a woman has some rights which even a besotted lover is bound to respect. You made love to her that summer at Croydon; you needn't deny it. And at the end of things you walk off to make your fortune without committing yourself; without knowing, or apparently caring, what your stiff-necked poverty-pride may cost her in years of uncertainty. You deserve to lose her."

      Kent's smile was a fair measure of his unhopeful mood.

      "You can't well lose what you have never had. I'm not such an ass as to believe that she cared greatly."

      "How do you know? Not by anything you ever gave her a chance to say, I'll dare swear. I've a bit of qualified good news for you, but the spirit is moving me mightily to hold my tongue."

      "Tell me," said Kent, his indifference vanishing in the turning of a leaf.

      "Well, to begin with, Miss Brentwood is still unmarried, though the gossips say she doesn't lack plenty of eligible offers."

      "Half of that I knew; the other half I took for granted. Go on."

      "Her mother, under the advice of the chief of the clan Brentwood, has been making a lot of bad investments for herself and her two daughters: in other words, she has been making ducks and drakes of the Brentwood fortune."

      Kent was as deeply moved as if the loss had been his own, and said as much, craving more of the particulars.

      "I can't give them. But I may say that the blame lies at your door, David."

      "At my door? How do you arrive at that?"

      "By the shortest possible route. If you had done your duty by Elinor in the Croydon summer, Mrs. Brentwood would have had a bright young attorney for a son-in-law and adviser, and the bad investments would not have been made."

      Kent's laugh was entirely devoid of mirth.

      "Don't trample on a man when he's down. I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But how bad is the smash? Surely you know that?"

      "No, I don't. Bradford was telling me about it the day I left Boston. He gave me to understand that the principal family holding at present is in the stock of a certain western railway."

      "Did he happen to know the name of the stock?" asked Kent, moistening his lips.

      "He did. Fate flirts with you two in the usual fashion. Mrs. Brentwood's little fortune—and by consequence, Elinor's and Penelope's—is tied up in the stock of the company whose platform we are occupying at the present moment—the Western Pacific."

      Kent let slip a hard word directed at ill-advisers in general, and Loring took his cue from the malediction.

      "You swear pretty feelingly, David. Isn't our property as good a thing as we of the Boston end have been cracking it up to be?"

      "You know better about the financial part of it than I do. But—well, you are fresh from this anarchistic conclave at the Opera House. You can imagine what the stock of the Western Pacific, or of any other foreign corporation doing business in this State, will be worth in six months after Bucks and his crowd get into the saddle."

      "You speak as if the result of the election were a foregone conclusion. I hope it isn't. But we were talking more particularly of Miss Brentwood, and your personal responsibilities." The belated train was whistling for the lower yard, and Loring was determined to say all that was in his mind.

      "Yes; go on. I'm anxious to hear—more anxious than I seem to be, perhaps."

      "Well, she is coming West, after a bit. She, and her sister and the mother. Mrs. Brentwood's asthma is worse, and the wise men have ordered her to the interior. I thought you'd like to know."

      "Is she—are they coming this way?" asked Kent.

      The train was in, and the porter had fetched Loring's hand-bag from the check-stand. The guest paused with one foot on the step of the sleeping-car.

      "If I were you, David, I'd write and ask; I should, by Jove. It would be a tremendously cheeky thing to do, of course, having such a slight acquaintance with her as you have; but I'll be hanged if I shouldn't chance it. And in the mean time, if I don't go back East next week, you'll hear from me. When you do, or if you do, take a day off and run up to the capital. I shall need you. Good-by."

      Kent watched the train pull out; stood looking after it until the two red eyes of the rear signals had disappeared in the dusty darkness of the illimitable plain. Then he went to his rooms, to the one which was called by courtesy his office, and without allowing himself time for a nice balancing of the pros and cons, squared himself at the desk to write a letter.

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       Table of Contents

      It was precisely on the day set for the Brentwoods' westward flitting that the postman, making his morning round, delivered David Kent's asking at the house in the Back Bay sub-district. Elinor was busy packing for the migration, but she left Penelope and the maid to cope with the problem of compressing two trunkfuls into one while she

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