think better of it."
"You needn't take it if you don't want to," the other said, sullenly.
Dr. Lavendar took it, and John Gordon called after him,
"You won't tell Alex?"
Dr. Lavendar shook his head and sighed. As he drove home he said to himself that a loan was better than nothing. "But, Danny, my boy," he added, "what a chance he had! Well, he'll take it yet – he'll take it yet. The trouble with me, Daniel, is, I'm in too much of a hurry to make folks good. I must reform."
Danny blinked a grave agreement, and Dr. Lavendar, dropping his shortcomings joyfully from his mind, began to sing to himself:
"Oh! what has caused this great commotion – motion – motion
Our country through?"
When, however, a day or two later, Dr. Lavendar went up to Mercer to take the check to Algernon Keen, he found to his astonishment that it was not so easy to secure to his old friend even the smaller and meaner opportunity of lending, much less giving.
At first, Algernon looked at him open-mouthed. "Him– offering to lend money to – ?" His astonishment robbed him of words. Then into his poor, shallow face came the first keen touch of shame. But instantly he was ashamed of his shame, – ashamed, like so many of us strange human creatures, of the stirring of God within him. He didn't want their dirty money, he said. They thought themselves so good, they couldn't stomach Mary. Well, then, they were too good for him to touch their money. His voice shook with angry grief. His bitterness was genuine, even though he used it to hide that first regenerative pang of shame. No; Dr. Lavendar could take their money back to them. "I spent my last cent, just about, on Mary," he said; "and I didn't begrudge it, either."
"I'm sure you didn't begrudge it."
Algy's weak mouth shook and his eyes filled; he turned away and stared out of the window. "He better have offered to lend her some money than me," he said. "I bet he's glad she's dead."
(Dr. Lavendar thought of Alex.) "He wants to help you now for her sake," he said.
"I don't want his money," the younger man insisted, brokenly; "he let her die."
"I think that it would please her to have you take it."
"I don't want to be under obligations to those people," Algernon said, doggedly.
"If Mr. Gordon has your note, it's business."
Algy hesitated. "I suppose he thinks I'd never pay it back?"
"If he takes your note, it looks as if he expected to be repaid."
"It's treating me white, I'll say that," Algernon said. And again his face reddened slowly to his forehead and he would not meet Dr. Lavendar's eye. "But I don't want their favors," he cried, threateningly.
"It's business, if you give your note," Dr. Lavendar repeated. "Come, Algernon, let her father do something for her sake. And as for you – it's a chance to play the man; don't you see that?"
Algy caught his breath. "Damn! – if I borrowed his money I'd pay it – I'd pay it, if it took the blood out of me."
"I will make your feeling clear to him," Dr. Lavendar said. "Let's make out the note now, Algy."
The old man got up and hunted about for pen and paper. "Here's a prescription blank," he said; "that will do." An ink-bottle stood on the narrow mantel-shelf, a rusty pen corroding in its thickening depths; but Dr. Lavendar, in a very small, shaky old hand, managed to scrawl that "Algernon Keen, for value received, promised to pay to John Gordon – "
– "in a year," Algy broke in; "I ain't going to have it run but a year – and put in the interest, sir. I'll have no favors from 'em. I'll pay interest; I'll pay six per cent. – like anybody else would."
– "and interest on same," Dr. Lavendar added. "Now, you sign here, Algy. There! that will please Mary."
"Oh, my!" said Algernon, his poor, red-rimmed eyes filling – "oh, my! my! what will I do without her?"
The next day Dr. Lavendar carried the note back to old John Gordon, who took it, his mouth tightening, and glanced at it in silence. Then he shuffled over to a safe in the corner of his library and pulled out a japanned tin box. Dr. Lavendar watched him fumble with the combination lock, holding the box up to catch the light, and shaking it a little until the lid clicked open. "He'll never pay it," John Gordon said.
"He'll try to," Dr. Lavendar said; "but it's doubtful, of course. He's a sickly fellow, and he hasn't much gumption. But if there's any good in him, your trusting him will bring it out."
"There isn't any good in him," the other said, violently.
And that was the last they said about it; for the time Algernon Keen dropped out of their lives.
He set up his little store in Mercer, and struggled along, advertising his samples of perfumery and pomade upon his own person; trying to drink a little less, for Mary's sake; whimpering with loneliness and sick-headache in his grimy room in the hotel where Mary had died; and never forgetting for a day that promise to pay on the back of the prescription paper in John Gordon's possession. But when the year came round, on the 2d of December, he had not a cent in hand to meet his obligation. And that was why Dr. Lavendar heard of him again. Would the doctor – this on perfumed paper, ruled, and with gilt edges – would the doctor "ask him if he would extend?" Algernon could pay the interest now; but that was all he could do. He wasn't in very good shape, he said. He'd been in the hospital for a month, and had had to hire a salesman. "I guess he cheated me; he was a kind of fancy talker, and got me to let him buy some stock; he got off his slice, I bet." That was the reason, Algy said, that he could not make any payment on the principal. But he was going to introduce a new article for the lips (no harmful drugs in it), called Rosebloom – first-class thing; and he expected he'd do first rate with it. And in another year he'd surely pay that note. It hung over him, he said, like a ton. "I guess he don't want it paid any more than I want to pay it," Algy ended, simply.
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