James Brendan Connolly – The Major Collection

Chapter 3

"Here's a far traveller--" He paused. She looked up, and quickly looked down.

"--who gives thanks that you forgot, Marie, in that first glad hour, Mr. Necker and his--well, his possible mission."

"You know something of him, then, Andie?"

"I'm still guessing. But I'm wondering now if you said to yourself when he had gone: 'After all, what will Greg get out of this government work? Is it fair to himself to refuse those great offers and stick down here? And what will it mean to young Greg?'"

Marie Welkie let the ensign drop onto the table. "My very thoughts in words, Andie. And while we're speaking of it, will Greg ever get the recognition due him, Andie?"

"Surely--some day."

"Dear me, that some day! After he is dead, I suppose. You men are the idealists! But being only a woman, Andie Balfe, I don't want to wait that long to see my brother rewarded."

"And being only a man, Marie Welkie, I also want to see my friend rewarded before he's laid away."

"But will he ever?"

"Who could answer that? But I stopped off in Washington on my way, Marie, and had a long talk with a man who is fine enough to appreciate the dreams of idealists and yet sufficiently human to allow for most human weaknesses. We discussed Greg and his work. The Construction people were mentioned. He asked me if I thought Greg would go with them. 'And if he does, Mr. President, can be he blamed?' was my answer."

"And how did he take it?"

"He leaned back in his chair and looked through his glasses with his eyebrows drawn together, in that way you'd think he was scowling if you didn't know him. After a moment he said: 'I should be sorry, but if he does, no professional or legal--no, nor moral--obligations can hold him.'"

"There! Greg does not even get credit for----"

"Wait. 'But will he?' he continued. I said that I did not think so. 'What makes you think he won't?' 'Because I know him, sir. But,' I went on, 'don't you think, Mr. President, that by this time he should have a word of encouragement or appreciation?' And that led to quite a talk."

"About Greg, Andie?"

"Greg and his work, Marie."

She leaned her elbows on the table and from between her palms smiled across at him. "When you use that tone, Andie, I know that all women should stay silent. But could--couldn't a little sister to the man in the case be given just a little hint?"

"To the little sister--Oh, much! To her I can say that I have reason to think that something is on its way to her brother which will be very pleasing to her and to him."

"For which, my lord, thy servant thanks thee."

Eight bells echoed from the fleet. "Eight o'clock, and somebody walking the beach! It couldn't be, Andie--it couldn't be that Mr. Necker----"

Balfe gravely shook his head.

"But, Andie," she whispered, "there was the most friendly expression in his eye!"

"If there's a living man, Marie"--he bent over also to whisper--"who could hold speech with you for ten seconds without a friendly gleam--" A knock on the veranda door interrupted.

It was Necker. "How do you do again, Miss Welkie?" To her his bow was appreciative, deferential. To Balfe he nodded in a not unfriendly fashion.

"I'm glad to see you again, Mr. Necker. Come in, please. I will call my brother." She pressed a button on the veranda wall. "That will bring him right down, Mr. Necker. And now I'm leaving you with Mr. Balfe. Diana, our cook's little boy has a fever----"

"Fever, Marie?"

"Oh, don't worry, Andie, if you're thinking of danger. It's only malaria. And it's only a step or two, and you must stay with Mr. Necker."

Balfe held the door open for her. She paused in the doorway. "I'll be back in half an hour."

"Half an hour! Time is no bounding youth, Marie Welkie."

"Come for me, then--Oh, when you please," she whispered, and passed swiftly out.

* * * * *

Necker was examining the shelf of books above the work-table. "Keats? Keats? Oh-h, poetry! Montaigne. Montaigne? Oh, yes!" He took it down. "H-m, in French!" and put it back. One after the other he read the titles. "Elizabethan Verse. E-u-r-i-p-i-d-e-s. Dante. H-m."

Balfe by now had turned from the screen door. Necker pointed to the shelf. "Not a book for a practical man in the whole lot, and"--he held up the ensign--"this! Isn't that the dreamer through and through?"

"But you and I, not being dreamers, consider how thankful we should be."

Necker stared in surprise, and then he smiled. "Now, now, I'm meaning no harm to your friend. I guess you don't know what I'm after, though I'll bet I can guess what you're after."

Balfe, fairly meeting Necker's eye, had to smile; and when Necker saw Balfe smile he winked. "You don't s'pose you could come down here to this God-forsaken hole, do you, without somebody getting curious?"

"I suppose it was too much to expect. Have a smoke?"

"Thanks." Necker's tone was polite, but it was a most negligent glance that he gave the box of cigars. There was no name on the box. Balfe, with unsmiling mien, pointed out two small letters on the cover. "$1.$2. Mr. Necker."

"$1.$2."

"Hernando Cabada, Key West."

"O-ho! How'd you ever manage to get hold of a box of them?"

"They're Welkie's."

"How can he afford 'em? I offered old Cabada a dollar, a dollar and a half, and finally two dollars apiece for a thousand of 'em, coming through Key West the other day--and couldn't get 'em. Nor could all the pull I had in the place get 'em for me. He wasn't going to make any more that week, he said. He's a queer one. He's got all those Socialist chaps going the other way. For why should he work four, five, six hours a day, he said, when he could make all he wanted in one or two? Sells cigars to people he likes for fifteen dollars a hundred, but wouldn't sell to me at any price. I had to take my hat off to him--he stuck. Now, how do you dope a chap like that?"

"How do you?"

"Don't know the real values in life. Maybe a bit soft up top, besides." He lit up and drew several deep inhalations. "M-m--this is a smoke for a man!" He picked up the box gently. "If I thought Welkie'd take it, I'd offer more than a good price for the rest of that box. But"--suspicion was growing in his eyes--"how does it happen--d'y' s'pose somebody's been here ahead of me after all?"

"He's coming down-stairs now--ask him," smiled Balfe.

Welkie stepped into the veranda. "I was in my workroom when the buzzer told me you had come in, Mr. Necker, but on the way down I couldn't help looking in on young Greg. I'm glad to see you."

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Welkie. And to get right down to business, I'm the new president of the Gulf Construction Company, and I want to talk a few things over with you."

"Surely."

"Greg"--Balfe had opened the door--"how far up the beach to your cook's shack?"

"Oh, for Marie? A hundred yards that side."

"I'll look in there. Good night, Mr. Necker."

"Don't hurry away on my account, Mr. Balfe. I'd like you, or any friend of Mr. Welkie and his family, to hear what I have to say. It's a straight open-and-shut proposition I've got."

"Then we'll try to be back to hear some of it. Good-by for a while, then." The door closed behind him.

"Let's sit down, Mr. Necker."

"Thanks. And how did you leave that boy of yours?"

"In his little bed, with his pillow jammed up close to his window-screen, singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' to himself and looking out on the lights of the fleet. He's afraid they'll steam away before he's seen his fill of them, and to-night he's not going to sleep till he hears taps, he says."

"It must be a great thing to have a boy like him, and to plan for his future and to look forward to what he'll be when he's grown up."

Welkie looked his interrogation.

"Surely, Welkie. A boy of brains he'll be. I don't have to look at a man or a boy twice. Brains and will power. You could make a great career for him, Welkie--a great engineer, say, if he was started right. But, of course, you'll be in a position by and by to see that he gets the start."

"Started right? What does he want when he has health and brains and a heart?"

"All fine, but he'll need more than that these days."

"Are these days so different?"

"Different, man! Why, the older a country is, the more civilized it is, the more education means, the more social position counts, the more money counts."

"How much more?"

"A heap more. Listen. Your father on twenty-five hundred a year, say, could put his children through college, couldn't he? On twenty-five hundred a year to-day a man with a family has to battle to keep out of the tenement districts. A dozen years from now, if you're getting no more money than you're getting now, you'll be wondering if you won't have to take that boy out of school and put him to work. Isn't that so?"

Welkie made no answer.

"All right. But before I go any farther, let me say that I want you, Mr. Welkie, for our new job."

"What's wrong with the man you've got?"

"He won't do. You're the one man we want, and if there's money enough in our strong box, we're going to get you. And now that I've got that off, let me show you where it is for your higher--I say your higher, not alone your moneyed--interests to come with us, Mr. Welkie. There's that boy of yours--you'd surely like to see him a great man?"

"I surely wouldn't dislike it."

"Good. Then give him a chance. Get rid first of the notion that a poor boy has as good a chance as another. He hasn't. I know that all our old school-books told us different--along with some other queer things. No wonder. Nine times out of ten they were got up by men born poor and intended for children born poor. It is a fine old myth in this country that only the poor boy ever gets anywhere. As a matter of fact, the poor boys outnumber the comfortably born boys ten to one, yet run behind in actual success. Even history'll tell you that. Alexander--son of a king. Cæsar? Frederick the Great? Oh, loads of 'em! You don't seem to think much of that?"

"Not a great deal," smiled Welkie. "If you're going to call the long roll of history, it looks to me like it's a mistake to name only three, or twenty-three, or thirty-three men. You cast your eye along that little book-shelf there and----"

"Oh, I've been looking them over--Dante and Michael Angelo and Homer and Shakespeare and that knight-errant Spaniard and the rest of 'em. But I'm not talking of poets and philosophers and the like. I'm talking of the men who bossed the job when they were alive."

"But how about those who bossed it after they were dead?"

"But, damn it, Welkie, I'm talking of men of action."

"Men of action or--ditch-diggers?"

"What!"

"That's what I call most of 'em, Necker--ditch-diggers. If your man of action hasn't himself thought out what he's doing, that's what he looks like to me--a ditch-digger, or at best a foreman of ditch-diggers. And a ditch-digger, a good ditch-digger, ought to be respected--until he thinks he's the whole works. Those kings of yours may have bossed the world, Necker, but, so long's we're arguing it, who bossed them?"