The Lever.

by William Dana Orcutt.

I

The girl leaned forward impulsively from the leisurely moving victoria and looked back at the automobile which whizzed by the carriage, along the maple-lined road leading from Washington to Chevy Chase; then she as suddenly resumed her former position when she discovered that the young man, who was the only occupant of the motor-car, had slowed down and was gazing back at her.

"How impertinent!" she exclaimed, flushing, addressing herself rather than the older woman beside her. "Of course, it couldn't be Allen; but if it wasn't, why was he looking back at me? Did you recognize him, Eleanor?"

"Who's impertinent?" queried Patricia, who sat between them and exercised a ten-year-old sister's prerogative.

Mrs. Gorham was quietly amused. "Which question shall I answer first, Alice--and who is 'Allen' supposed to be?"

It was the girl's turn to sense the situation. "How ridiculous!" she laughed. "Of course you wouldn't know. Allen Sanford and I used to play together when we were children in Pittsburgh. I haven't seen him since we moved away after mamma died; but that really looked like him. I wonder if by any chance it could be?"

"Oh, Alice, he's coming back," announced Patricia from her point of vantage on her knees, and a moment later the same automobile, driven at a speed at which the most conscientious of traffic guardians could not complain, pa.s.sed them slowly at the left. The young man made an effort to conceal the fact that he was surveying the girl in the victoria, but Alice cut short his suspense.

"It is! it is!" she cried, eagerly; and with the recognition made certain the boy shut off his power, and, springing out of the car, was beside her before even the discreet coachman could draw up to the curb.

"I thought I couldn't be mistaken--" he began.

"But you weren't sure," Alice finished for him. "You were trying to remember a little girl with a pigtail down her back and horrid freckles all over her face--now, weren't you?"

"If that's the way you really looked, I evidently wasn't as fussy about such things then as I am now," he laughed. "All I remember is that you were the dandiest little playmate I ever had."

The unexpected compliment caused Alice to turn quickly to Mrs. Gorham.

"This is Allen Sanford, Eleanor; and this, Allen, is my mother, sister, and dearest friend all in one."

"And my name's Pat," added the child, refusing to be ignored and holding out her hand cordially.

The boy was even more embarra.s.sed by the unexpected meeting with the second Mrs. Gorham than to find Alice developed into so lovely and fascinating a young woman. He had always thought of Alice's step-mother, when he had thought of her at all, as of a type entirely different from this slender, attractive woman only a few years older than Alice herself. There was a self-possession about Mrs. Gorham, a quiet dignity, which made the difference in their ages seem greater than it really was; yet, had he not known, Allen would have thought them sisters. His father was sceptical when he heard of Gorham's second marriage: "It's bigamy, that's what it is," were Stephen Sanford's words. "Gorham is married to his business. Everything he touches turns into gold. Business to him is what a great pa.s.sion for a woman would be to one man, or a supreme friendship to another; but the lever which moves Robert Gorham is neither love nor steel; it is cold, hard cash."

All this flashed through Allen's mind in that brief moment of silence after the introduction, but the thoughts of at least one of the two women had been equally active. To Alice this chance meeting recalled a time in her life sanctified by the loss of her mother, later made easier to look back upon by the rare sympathy which had existed from the first between herself and the sweet, tactful woman who had come into her life, filling the aching void and awakening her to a new interest in her surroundings. She and Allen had been "chums" in those early days, and it gratified her to discover that the boy whom she had admired in a childish way had become a young man so agreeable to look upon and so little changed, except in growth, from the lad she remembered. His six feet of height carried him to a greater alt.i.tude than of old, his well-developed arms and shoulders showed a physical strength which his youth had not promised, but his face wore the same frank, care-free, irresponsible and good-natured expression which had made him beloved by all his acquaintances and taken seriously by none.

Allen's smile returned before he found his voice, and was so infectious that Alice, Mrs. Gorham, and Patricia were also smiling broadly.

"It's awfully good to see you again, Alice," he said, with a sincerity which could not be doubted; "and to meet you, too, Mrs. Gorham, not forgetting Lady Pat." And then, as if in explanation, "You see, as Alice says, she and I were pals when we were youngsters in Pittsburgh, and I can't realize that now she's grown up into such a--"

"Do you remember the games of baseball we used to play together?" Alice interrupted.

"Indeed I do," he responded. "She could throw a ball overhand just like a boy," Allen continued, turning to Mrs. Gorham lest he seem to discriminate in his attentions.

"She can't do it now, but I can," Patricia remarked, with an air of superiority, subsiding as Alice glanced meaningly at her.

"And once you thrashed Jim Thatcher for calling me a tomboy. Oh, I looked upon you as a real story-book hero!"

"I suspect that's the only time on record." Allen laughed again consciously. "That's one epithet I haven't had hurled at me enough times to make me nervous." He looked at the horses critically. "You don't suppose there's any chance of a runaway here to give me another opportunity, do you?"

"How about the football games, and the races at New London?" Alice asked.

"What do you know about those?"

"I read all about everything in the papers. Your father was so proud that he told my father and every one about your college record; so, you see, your friends had no difficulty in keeping posted."

"My father was proud of me?" Allen demanded, in genuine astonishment.

"Haven't you gotten things a little mixed? That doesn't sound like the pater at all. He didn't boast any of my record in my studies, did he?"

"Father didn't say." Alice leaned forward mischievously. "Did you get your degree _c.u.m laude_, Allen?"

"Not exactly," he answered, frankly. "_c.u.m difficultate_ would be more like it; but I got it, anyhow."

"And what have you been doing since?" Mrs. Gorham asked.

"I went abroad right after Commencement."

"To perfect yourself in the languages?"

"Well"--the boy hesitated--"that may have been the pater's intention, but he didn't state it audibly. As a matter of fact, I perfected myself in running an automobile more than anything else, but I had a corking good time."

"And now what? You see how inquisitive I am," Alice said.

"And now"--he repeated it after her--"I want to go into business, and the pater says diplomacy for mine. We've had lots of arguments over it, until we finally compromised it just as we usually do--by my doing it his way. So here I am in Washington, awaiting my country's call, ready to steer the great U.S.A. through any old international complication they can scare up. But I mustn't keep you and Mrs. Gorham here any longer. It is just fine to see you again."

"You will come and see us at the hotel," Mrs. Gorham said, warmly seconded by Alice. "Won't you dine with us to-morrow evening? Mr. Gorham will be glad to hear about you from yourself."

To-morrow evening seemed far away to Allen, so he supplemented Mrs.

Gorham's invitation by a suggestion that they take a motor ride with him the following afternoon, which brought the time of their meeting that much nearer.

For some little time after Allen's machine had disappeared Alice and Mrs. Gorham continued their drive in silence, and it was Patricia who spoke first.

"Isn't he the grandest thing?" she remarked. "He's just like one of King Arthur's knights. And he called me 'Lady Pat.'"

"You dear child," Eleanor cried, impulsively pressing the little form to her.

"That is exactly what I ought to be," Alice said, abruptly. "Just think how pleased father would be."

"What ought you to be that you are not, my dear?" Mrs. Gorham inquired, surprised.

"Why, a boy like Allen just ready to start off on a business career.

That's about the only disappointment father has ever experienced, not having a son to succeed him. You know as I do how much it would mean to him to 'found a house,' as he calls it. I've seen him looking at Pat and me so many times with an expression in his eyes which I understood, and it has hurt me all through that I couldn't have been the son he longed for. The aggravating part of it all is that nothing interests me so much as business. I must have inherited father's love for it. I adore listening to him when he is discussing some great problem with Mr.

Covington. It seems to me the grandest thing in the world to be able to influence people, and to create or expand industries and actually to accomplish results."

Mrs. Gorham understood the girl's mood and knew that it was wiser to let her run on without interruption.

"I don't feel the same about other things," Alice continued, pausing from time to time as she became more introspective. "I'm fond of poetry, of course, but I can't understand how any one can be satisfied to do nothing else but write poems; I admire art, but with my admiration for the artist's work there's a real pity for the man because he is debarred from the world of action. If I were a man I would have to do something which had a physical as well as an intellectual struggle in it, with a reward at the end to be striven for which was not expressed alone in the praise of the world--it would have to be power itself."