got up from his chair to the full height of his six-feet-one, and stretched one hundred and ninety pounds of bone and muscle.
“And so I shall go to Sobrante and lose all of this all-important money, shall I?” he jeered. “Then, by all the gods of the Open Country, I hope I may! Old man, you have browsed through a heap of literature in your day, but I doubt if it has done you any good. Permit me to map out a course of reading for you. Get a copy of 'Paradise Lost' and another of 'Cyrano de Bergerac.' In the former you will find a line running somewhat thusly: 'What tho' the cause be lost, all is not lost!' And in the immortal work of Monsieur Rostand, let me recommend one little page—about fifteen lines. Read them, old money-grubber, and learn! On second thought, do not read them. Those lines would only be wasted on you, for you have become afflicted with hypertrophy of the acquisitive sense, which thins the blood, dwarfs the understanding, stunts the perception of relative values, and chills the feet. .
“Let me foretell your future for the next twenty years, Neddy. You will spend about forty per cent, of your time in this lounging-room, thirty per cent, of it in piling up a bank-roll, out of which you will glean no particular enjoyment, and the remaining thirty per cent, you will spend in bed. And then some bright morning your heart-beat will slow down almost imperceptibly, and the House Committee will order a wreath of autumn leaves hung just above Number Four domino table, and it will remain there until the next annual house-cleaning, when some swamper 'will say, 'What the devil is this stuff here for?' and forthwith he will tear it down and consign it to the fireplace.”
“Ba-a-li,” growled Jerome.
“The truth hurts, I know,” Webster pursued relentlessly, “but hear me to the bitter end. And then presently shall enter the club no less a personage than young John Stuart Webster, even as he entered it to-day. He will be smelling of country with the hair on, and he will glance toward Table Number Four and murmur sympathetically: 'Poor old Jerome! I knowed him good!' Did I hear you say 'Huh!' just then? I thank thee for teaching me that word. Take careful note and see I use it correctly—'Huh!' Dad burn you, Neddy, I'm not a Methuselah. I want some fun in life. I want to fight and be broke and go hungry and then make money for the love of making it and spending it, and I want to live a long time yet. I have a constitutional weakness for foregathering with real he-men, doing real he-things, and if I'm to be happy, I'll just naturally have to be the he-est of the whole confounded pack! I want to see the mirage across the sagebrush and hear it whisper: 'Hither, John Stuart Webster! Hither, you fool, and I'll hornswaggle you again, as in an elder day I horn,swaggled you before.'”
Jerome shook his white thatch hopelessly.
“I thought you were a great mining engineer, John,” he said sadly, “but you're not. You're a poet. You do not seem to care for money.”
“Well,” Webster retorted humorously, “it isn't exactly what you might term a ruling passion. I like to make it, but there's more fun spending it. I've made a hundred thousand dollars, and now I want to go blow it—and I'm going to. Do not try to argue with me. I'm a lunatic and I will have my way. If I didn't go tearing off to Sobrante and join forces with Billy Geary, there to play the game, red or black, I'd feel as if I had done something low and mean and small. The boy's appealed to me, and I have made my answer. If I come back alive but broke, you know in your heart you'll give me the best job you have.”
“You win,” poor Jerome admitted.
“Hold the job open thirty days. At the end of that period I'll give you a definite answer, Neddy.”
“There is no Balm in Gilead,” Jerome replied sadly. “Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.”
“It's six-thirty,” Webster suggested. “Let's eat. Last call for that omelette soufflé, and we'll go to a show afterward. By the way, Neddy, how do you like this suit? Fellow in Salt Lake built it for me—ninety bucks!”
But Jerome was not interested in clothing and similar foolishness. He only knew that he had lost the services of a mining engineer for whom he had searched the country for a month. He rose, dusting the cigar ashes from his vest, and followed sulkily.
Despite the evidences of “grouch” which Jerome brought to the dinner table with John Stuart Webster, he was not proof against the latter's amazing vitality and boundless good spirits. The sheer weight of the Websterian optimism and power of enjoying simple things swept all of Jerome's annoyance from him as a brisk breeze dissipates the low-lying fog that hides a pleasant valley, and ere the second cocktail had made its appearance, the president of the Colorado Consolidated Mines Company, Limited, was doing his best to help Webster enjoy this one perfect night snatched from the grim processional of sunrise and sunset that had passed since last he had dallied with the fleshpots—that were to pass ere he should dally with them again according to his peculiar nature and inclination.
Lovingly, lingeringly, Mr. Webster picked his way through the hors d'ouvres, declared against the soup as too filling, mixed the salad after a recipe of his own, served it and consumed it prior to the advent of the entrée, which if not the fashion in the West, at present, has not as yet gone entirely out of fashion. He revelled in breast of pheasant, with asparagus tips, and special baked potato; he thrilled with champagne at twelve dollars the quart, and a tender light came into his quizzical glance at sight of a brick of ice cream in four colours; he cheered for the omelette soufflé. In the end he demanded a tiny cheese fit for active service, cracked himself a peck of assorted nuts, and with a pot of black coffee and the best cigars possible of purchase in Denver, he leaned back at his ease and forgot the theatre in the long-denied delight of yarning with his old friend.
At one o'clock next morning they were still seated in the cosy grill, smoking and talking. Jerome looked at his watch.
“Great grief, Johnny!” he declared. “I must be trotting along. Haven't been out this late in years.”
“It's the shank of the evening, Neddy,” Webster pleaded, “and I'm hungry again. We'll have a nice broiled lobster, with drawn butter—eh, Ned? And another quart of that '98?”
“My liver would never stand it. I'd be in bed for a week,” Jerome protested. “See you at the club to-morrow afternoon before you leave, I presume.”
“If I get through with my shopping in time,” Webster answered, and reluctantly abandoning the lobster and accessories, he accompanied Jerome to the door and saw him safely into a taxicab.
“Sure you won't think it over, Jack, and give up this crazy proposition?” he pleaded at parting.
Webster shook his head. “I sniff excitement and adventure and profit in Sobrante, Neddy, and I've just got to go look-see. I'm like an old burro staked out knee-deep in alfalfa just now. I won't take kindly to the pack—”
“And like an old burro, you won't be happy until you've sneaked through a hole in the fence to get out into a stubble-field and starve.” Jerome swore halfheartedly and promulgated the trite proverb that life is just one blank thing after the other—an inchoate mass of liver and disappointment!
“Do you find it so?” Webster queried sympathetically.
Suspecting that he was being twitted, Jerome looked up sharply, prepared to wither Webster with that glance. But no, the man was absolutely serious; whereupon Jerome realized the futility of further argument and gave John Stuart Webster up for a total loss. Still, he could not help smiling as he reflected how Webster had planned a year of quiet enjoyment and Fate had granted him one brief evening. He marvelled that Webster could be so light-hearted and contented under the circumstances.
Webster
