Dangerous Business/Chapter 16
Lew Alban arrived in town at precisely the most effective and agreeable moment for himself. He did not make the mistake of hastening upon the heels of disaster; he gave the Rountrees time to feel the full force of it and to appreciate the calamity if they lost, at one stroke, the bulk of their remaining business.
Jay was on the street, selling or trying to sell, but he was gaining, chiefly, experience, and a point of view. He had made up a list of prospects, for his personal attention, compiled from golfers and from Harvard, Yale and Princeton people who had been, or who might by any chance become, customers; and in five weeks, he brought in one new order.
"Look at it," he bid Ellen, laying it upon her desk. "A wonderful order—two hundred dollars gross. We'll net maybe ten dollars."
"But it's a start with Howarth-Lyman," said Ellen. "We haven't sold them anything at all for eight years."
Jay nodded. "I squeezed that out through Ken Howarth. He was in the Yale boat; was with him in New London, once. You know I'd have starved, or have taken a job as a waiter in a restaurant, before I'd have gone to Ken Howarth to help me out with ten dollars, because I knew him rowing; but I went to him a couple of weeks ago on that introduction 'and to-night, because he knew me rowing, I have his order. That's business."
Ellen's steady eyes studied him. "It doesn't bother you now."
"It bothers me like the devil that it's not bigger," said Jay. "I hear Lew Alban is on his way to us."
"He'll be here Monday," said Ellen. "There's only one train from Stanley in the morning. It's early. Meeting him?"
"At the train?" asked Jay. "Me?"
"Art Slengel will probably be there," said Ellen. "Your father won't; and Mr. Lowry's out of town."
Jay set his alarm clock that night for rising earlier and, as he pointed the signal hand, he thought of that hour as Ellen Powell's for him. Lida's morning hour for him and for herself, he remembered, lay far along the dial; Lida, with all her lilt and liveliness, liked late rising and to loll in the room, bathing and breakfasting in luxurious leisure.
He recollected it, almost with surprise, as he dressed in his room cold from the night. Lida, far away, would not be cold; she had slipped away from New York, indeed, and was on the Wilmerdons' yacht in the Caribbean or perhaps she was ashore now at St. Lucia or Barbados. She had written him her itinerary in the letter which had announced her departure as an accomplished fact; for she had sailed before he received her letter. Two weeks ago that was, so now, unless the whim of the party had changed, they might be at St. Lucia.
It reminded Jay of Levuka. Lida had wantgd him to go with her to Levuka; instead she was in the palm groves of St. Lucia—with whom? He ran over her mention of the other guests: four men; two with their wives, two with none. Jay knew the one named Thurston: lots of money; lots of time; and he liked Lida. Jay had met him at Lida's school.
Jay hurried, without breakfast, to meet Lew Alban's train; for at this hour, Lew would not have breakfasted. Jay meant to take Lew to the Club. It was rotten weather and not even a Chicago slave could deny it; cold, low clouds and a hanging haze of smoke which demanded street lamps and motor headlights and permitted hardly a hint of the dawn. But Ellen Powell, Jay considered, was rising to go out in it.
Art Slengel was at the train-gate. "Hello, Rountree," hailed Slengel and offered a gloved hand and smiled.
He was ten years older than Jay and entirely sure of himself; he was tall and broad, in a new, heavy, tailored overcoat, fur-lined. Sleek hair he had and pink skin, close-shaven. You knew a barber always shaved him and scented him slightly, too; he smoked, rolling between thick lips, a cigar upon which he left the band.
Jay, shaking hands, could not keep from making a Harvard estimate of him. Never would he be elected to the Institute of 1776, not even in the last ten to be taken; never, never to "Dicky" or to the "Hasty Pudding."
Slengel was making a business estimate of Jay; and business was the issue between them. Never would Jay get Lew Alban for breakfast, Slengel thought—and Jay didn't. Lew descended and was glad to see Jay and somewhat surprised. He commented upon it. "Meet all trains now, Jay?" he inquired.
"Not quite," said Jay.
"Message for me?" Lew gibed him. "Or something like that?"
"No."
"What's happened?"
There was nothing, as all three knew, but that Lew Alban had become president of the company whose business was essential to Rountree and that Jay was in business. He made the best of this by saying: "I'm working now, Lew."
"Don't overdo, Jay," advised Lew and, turning to Slengel, went off with him.
It seemed to Jay, as he sat down to a twenty cent cafeteria breakfast, that Ellen Powell and he had made a mistake; he had offered Lew merely amusement at his expense. But that had pleased Lew, he realized; it was what Lew wanted and Lew appreciated it the more because it was before Art Slengel. Jay ceased to feel that he had accomplished nothing by his trip to the station. Certainly he had not dodged Lew; and he reported to Ellen Powell: "He's in town; and Art Slengel was there and got him."
"We'll see him here," prophesied Ellen; and at midafternoon, Lew called on Mr. Rountree, respectful enough in externals. He walked in without knocking, but he always had done that, and that was supposed to imply intimate friendship, not disrespect.
He spoke to her, after he had greeted Mr. Rountree, and his eye, unnoticed by Mr. Rountree, roved to her frequently.
"Slengels wanted to show me through their plant again," he commented. "They've a new unit, you know, just equipped."
Of course Mr. Rountree very well knew; it was the unit manufacturing for Metten.
Mr. Rountree resorted to personal talk about Lew's father, which opened the way for Lew to inquire: "How's the boy getting along? He certainly rises early. . . . His wife rejoined him?"
"She's cruising, with family friends, in the Caribbean," replied Mr. Rountree, and took up details of business between his company and Alban. Lew disposed of these quickly. He liked to be swifter than the man he dealt with. Over the shop-sheets, which Mr. Rountree lengthily studied, Lew looked at Ellen.
He was no man to possess power over others, but how much he held over Mr. Rountree and over Jay—and her! How much more than when, last, he had sat in the office eyeing her over shop-sheets! How much more she felt it.
Ellen did not flatter herself that she was more attractive, femininely, than other girls who were undoubtedly obtainable by Lew, but she knew the type of man that cares nothing for the cheaply obtained. It was the type that liked to destroy, and to destroy no easily bought stranger but one who had long defied and delayed him and upon whom he had often looked. It was this which, vaguely, she had realized and which had underlain her remark to Jay that Lew Alban would not be as simple for the Slengels as Sam Metten. Jello had delighted in Diana and had allowed her to compromise him, but Di would be a trifle to Lew.
Jay entered and, barely noticed by Lew, he sat at one side to await the finish of Lew's business with his father.
"You'll step over to the shop with me?" Mr. Rountree invited Lew.
"I've seen a shop to-day," reminded Lew subtly taunting; and Mr. Rountree left him to Jay and her.
"I'll take you up home," offered Jay, pleasantly, for Lew was to endure a perfunctory dinner with Mr. Rountree.
"What's up at your house now?" inquired Lew and glanced at Ellen. "I've some letters."
"All right," said Jay, and arose. Ellen always did Lew's letters when he was in Chicago; she kept for him sheets of the Alban stationery, which she produced, with hands slightly unsteady.
Jay noticed this and looked up at her. What excited her? he wondered. She possessed a calmness and a quality of poise, ordinarily, beyond any other girl he knew. It was what made her so satisfactory and companionable in a talk over affairs gone wrong; but she was upset, for this moment. He wondered about it and went out.
Ellen took her seat with notebook open and waited with the disquiet, which Jay had seen, astir within her. Lew kept her waiting. She arose and, to occupy herself, set to straightening Mr. Rountree's desk. Lew Alban's eyes were on her, watching her face and her hands and looking down, as he always did, at her legs. He was blowing smoke rings at her.
"You're a mighty good business girl," he spoke to her at last, "but you don't look it a bit." He awaited reply from her, but she disappointed him; she thought he had no letters! "You look like a girl laying her lace and linen in her hope chest instead of shop-sheets in a drawer. How is the hope chest?"
"I haven't one," denied Ellen, fluttering.
"How about the hopes?"
"None," said Ellen. Ordinarily she would have ignored him; but she did not, under the sway of the excitement which had seized her and was increasing visibly—for Lew saw it.
"Really?" he asked, hunching his chair closer to her.
At that, she deserted the desk; she would not have him nearer; but, also contrarily, she would! The excitement working in her stimulated him and he enjoyed it; she was stimulated by it. Yes; amazingly, she was; it was a sensation of power—a power over Lew Alban who, in other ways, held Mr. Rountree and Jay and her in his power. She had something Lew liked and wanted.
It was what Di had had which had given Di power. Here had been Di, an office girl, working with her hands and head, accomplishing nothing; but Di had put to use the power of her femininity and by it Di had torn away, or certainly helped to tear away, the half million dollars of Mettens.
Ellen, working here with her hands and head, was helpless, almost, as Di had been; with her hands and head, never could she hold, against his hatred of the Rountrees, Lew Alban; but if she put to use her femininity!
She slipped through the door into her own little room at the idea of it and escaped him only to recognize, instantly, that she had whetted him by this flight and had drawn him on.
Not at once, for it was his way to tantalize, he followed to the door and looked in at her, whereupon she gasped and dropped into her chair, turned from him and began typing; but she wrote nothing coherent. This he observed, as he stepped to her and, with his hand upon her, read over her shoulder.
"Practicing Russian—or Chinese?" he twitted her, squeezing her.
She slipped from under his grasp, which brought from him, "How long have you been feeling this way about me?"
"How long?"
"Been hiding it, have you? Or did it just break through to you?"
"What break through?"
"Me," he patted her, "to you."
"I don't know," she said, with scarcely breath for it.
"I don't care," he said, and both his hands were on her.
She moved but he held her and she did not struggle. The sensation in her paralyzed her. Let him; let him! Let him a little and see what you can do with him! You'll not have to do like Di. Allow him this and then think; don't think or feel now; let him do it.
He stooped to her, slipped his arms down her, held her to him and kissed her; held his lips on hers, pressing hers.
At last he let her go—she had done it. Dazedly, dully, almost without feeling she gazed at him. Aroused, flushed he was; his sallow cheeks were aglow.
"Rough with you, was I?" he whispered, shaking her. "Rough with you? You'll like it."
She arose and retreated from him, staring at him. She had had no idea of what it would be; but it was over; she'd done it. She'd not dodged.
To whom had she said that? Jay; Jay, of course. "You'll not dodge Lew Alban," she'd said and sent him to the train. So he'd not dodged and she hadn't. No, she'd not dodged Lew Alban.
He was talking to her but she did not know what he said. Someone entered Mr. Rountree's room; it was Jay, returning for Lew. She could not meet him. She let Lew go out to him; neither sent for her, so she stayed, shut in, until they were gone; then, snatching her hat and coat, she escaped.
It was clear and cool on the street. The breeze, what there was, blew from the lake so that the haze and smoke of the day was swept westward. The walk was crowded; the boulevard was a four-span stream of cars southward, a reverse stream of four span beyond. The shop windows were alight with a show illumination which dimmed the clusters of street lamps and drew, like moths to a flame, female passersby.
Ellen halted beside a group looking in at dresses; at gowns, indeed, of silk and velvet and handwork, beautiful and extravagant. Ellen stopped and stared, she did not see. With the back of her glove on her little, tightclenched fist she rubbed and rubbed at her lips which Lew Alban had kissed. Her shoulders quivered as under the grasp of his hands.
She seemed to hear his voice, speaking to her, and here he was himself, not a memory of him; he had found her on the street and stepped up to her.
"Take your pick," he was saying easily. "Pick any one anywhere. Look in all the windows!" he bid her and squeezed her arm and was gone. Jay was not with him, for she watched after him, to make sure of it; nor did she see Jay elsewhere on the walk. She went away from the window in the opposite direction from Lew Alban and circled the block before turning home.
Jay had not seen her, which was as well for him as for her, because he had been making of her, without being aware of it, a sort of reliance in his world of ever shifting, shaken values. He knew no other girl quite like her; and only now and then, amid the thousands and thousands of people one looked upon and passed, did he see any one with her quiet quality of—what was it? Poise? More than that but he had no word for it. He remembered, once, meeting her unexpectedly and suddenly. He had been going along and amid the hurrying, hunting, wondering, frightened faces approaching him, he had been caught by eyes which looked at him with none of the common panic. None of it! There she was.
Her father had such a quality, which lived in the eyes, Jay remembered; seamen's eyes, he had thought them, calm with the consideration of the four horizons, the water and sky and sun and stars. He liked Adrian Powell's eyes and he liked Ellen's looking on the world without any fear. So it was well he had not happened upon her to-night, for he would not have seen her without fear.
He had been awaiting Lew at the club and Lew rejoined him in more jovial mood, wherefore the ponderous function of family dinner, with his father and the Dills and Lew, passed more agreeably than usual. Lew sustained the entertainment, in good enough humor, until nine o'clock, when he departed to a destination not designated. He refused the offer of other social engagements with the Rountrees but would spend some time at the office in the morning.
Ellen, knowing of this, did dodge Lew on the very next day. She awoke with a headache which she never would have offered as an excuse for absence, ordinarily; but she telephoned, saying she was sick. As a result, there arrived for her in the afternoon red roses which Di curiously examined with her, discovering the initials "L.A." upon the card and the inscription: "Take your time. No hurry."
"Who's your L.A.?" demanded Di and, in a moment, "Lew?"
Ellen's scarlet face answered her.
"Lew!" declared Di. "Sure, Lew!"
Ellen thrust the buds back into the box. How had he learned her address? From whom at the office?
Di elucidated this point; she laughed. "He has his nerve. He asked me where I lived after I told him I roomed with you."
"Last night?" inquired Ellen.
"We was at a little supper," informed Di. "Not much doing." Di did not dwell upon the affair. "So he put down my number to say it with flowers to you."
She gazed at Ellen, who closed the box and bore it to the rear porch and left it there. Upon her return, Di repaid to Ellen a bit of her debt of reticence by refraining from overquestioning; verbally, they dropped it, but it dwelt unmentioned between them, disturbing Di.
For Di, too, had been making of Ellen a reliance; and Di discerned that it was not merely that Lew Alban had sent Ellen flowers but that Ellen had done something to deserve them on the day before this upon which she stayed in her room, Lew being at the office.