The Business of Life

"Stocks or literature. All the ginks who can't do anything else go into stocks or literature."

Desboro waved away the alternatives with amiable urbanity.

"Then run for your farms and grow things for market. You could do that, couldn't you? Even a Dutchess County millionaire can run a milk-route."

"I don't desire to grow milk," explained Desboro pleasantly.

Cairns regarded him with a grin of anxiety.

"You're jingled," he concluded. "That is, you are as jingled as you ever get. Why?"

"No reason, thanks."

"It isn't some girl, is it? You never take them seriously. All the same, is it?"

Desboro smiled: "Do you think it's likely, dear friend?"

"No, I don't. But whatever you're worrying about isn't improving your personal beauty. Since you hit this hamlet you've been on one continuous tootlebat. Why don't you go back to Westchester and hoe potatoes?"

"One doesn't hoe them in January, you know," said Desboro, always deprecatingly polite. "Please cease to trouble yourself about me. I'm quite all right, thanks."

"You've resigned from a lot of clubs and things, I hear."

"Admirably reported, dear friend, and perfectly true."

"Why?"

"Motives of economy; nothing more serious, John."

"You're not in any financial trouble, are you?"

"I – ah – possibly have been a trifle indiscreet in my expenditures – a little unfortunate in my investments, perhaps. You are very kind to ask me. It may afford you some gratification to learn that eventually I anticipate an agreeable return to affluence."

Cairns laughed: "You are jingled all right," he said. "I recognise the urbane symptoms of your Desboro ancestors."

"You flatter them and me," said Desboro, bowing. "They were the limit, and I'm nearing it."

"Pardon! You have arrived, sir," said Cairns, returning the salute with exaggerated gravity.

They parted with pomp and circumstance, Desboro to saunter back to his rooms and lie limply in his arm chair beside an empty fireplace until sleep overcame him where he sat. And he looked very young, and white, and somewhat battered as he lay there in the fading winter daylight.

The ringing racket of his telephone bell aroused him in total darkness. Still confused by sleep, he groped for the electric light switch, could not find it; but presently his unsteady hand encountered the telephone, and he unhooked the receiver and set it to his ear.

At first his imagination lied to him, and he thought it was Jacqueline's distant voice, though he knew in his heart it could not be.

"Jim," repeated the voice, "what are you doing this evening?"

"Nothing. I was asleep. It's you, Elena, isn't it?"

"Of course. To whom are you in the habit of talking every evening at seven by special request?"

"I didn't know it was seven."

"That's flattering to me. Listen, Jim, I'm coming to see you."

"I've told you a thousand times it can't be done – "

"Do you mean that no woman has ever been in your apartments?"

"You can't come," he repeated obstinately. "If you do, it ends my interest in your various sorrows. I mean it, Elena."

She laughed: "I only wanted to be sure that you are still afraid of caring too much for me. Somebody told me a very horrid thing about you. It was probably a lie – as long as you are still afraid of me."

He closed his eyes patiently and leaned his elbow on the desk, waiting for her to go on or to ring off.

"Was it a lie, Jim?"

"Was what a lie?"

"That you are entertaining a very pretty girl at Silverwood House – unchaperoned?"

"Do you think it likely?"

"Why not? They say you've done it before."

"Nobody has been there except on business. And, after all, you know, it doesn't – "

"Yes, it does concern me! Oh, Jim, are you being horrid – when I'm so unhappy and helpless – "

"Be careful what you say over the wire!"

"I don't care who hears me. If you mean anybody in your apartment house, they know my voice already. I want to see you, Jim – "

"No!"

"You said you'd be friendly to me!"

"I am – by keeping away from you."

"Do you mean that I am never to see you at all?"

"You know well enough that it isn't best, under the circumstances."

"You could come here if you only would. He is not in town to-night – "

"Confound it, do you think I'm that sort?"

"I think you are very absurd and not very consistent, considering the things that they say you are not too fastidious to do – "