“Oh dear, oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Kane, who was the first to hear the story. “My son, my Lester! How could he have done it!”
“And such a creature!” exclaimed Louise emphatically, as though the words needed to be reiterated to give them any shadow of reality.
“I went there solely because I thought I could help him,” continued Louise. “I thought when they said he was indisposed that he might be seriously ill. How should I have known?”
“Poor Lester!” exclaimed her mother. “To think he would come to anything like that!”
Mrs. Kane turned the difficult problem over in her mind and, having no previous experiences whereby to measure it, telephoned for old Archibald, who came out from the factory and sat through the discussion with a solemn countenance. So Lester was living openly with a woman of whom they had never heard. He would probably be as defiant and indifferent as his nature was strong. The standpoint of parental authority was impossible. Lester was a centralised authority in himself, and if any overtures for a change of conduct were to be made, they would have to be very diplomatically executed.
Archibald Kane returned to the manufactory sore and disgusted, but determined that something ought to be done. He held a consultation with Robert, who confessed that he had heard disturbing rumours from time to time, but had not wanted to say anything. Mrs. Kane suggested that Robert might go to Chicago, and have a talk with Lester.
“He ought to see that this thing, if continued, is going to do him irreparable damage,” said Mr. Kane. “He cannot hope to carry it off successfully. Nobody can. He ought to marry her or he ought to quit. I want you to tell him that for me.”
“All well and good,” said Robert, “but who’s going to convince him? I’m sure I don’t want the job.”
“I hope to,” said old Archibald, “eventually; but you’d better go up and try, anyhow. It can’t do any harm. He might come to his senses.”
“I don’t believe it,” replied Robert. “He’s a strong man. You see how much good talk does down here. Still, I’ll go if it will relieve your feelings any. Mother wants it.”
“Yes, yes,” said his father distractedly, “better go.”
Accordingly Robert went. Without allowing himself to anticipate any particular measure of success in this venture, he rode pleasantly into Chicago confident in the reflection that he had all the powers of morality and justice on his side.
Upon Robert’s arrival, the third morning after Louise’s interview, he called up the warerooms, but Lester was not there. He then telephoned to the house, and tactfully made an appointment. Lester was still indisposed, but he preferred to come down to the office, and he did. He met Robert in his cheerful, nonchalant way, and together they talked business for a time. Then followed a pregnant silence.
“Well, I suppose you know what brought me up here,” began Robert tentatively.
“I think I could make a guess at it,” Lester replied.
“They were all very much worried over the fact that you were sick — mother particularly. You’re not in any danger of having a relapse, are you?”
“I think not.”
“Louise said there was some sort of a peculiar menage she ran into up here. You’re not married, are you?”
“No.”
“The young woman Louise saw is just —” Robert waved his hand expressively.
Lester nodded.
“I don’t want to be inquisitive, Lester. I didn’t come up for that. I’m simply here because the family felt that I ought to come. Mother was so very much distressed that I couldn’t do less than see you for her sake —” he paused, and Lester, touched by the fairness and respect of his attitude, felt that mere courtesy at least made some explanation due.
“I don’t know that anything I can say will help matters much,” he replied thoughtfully. “There’s really nothing to be said. I have the woman and the family has its objections. The chief difficulty about the thing seems to be the bad luck in being found out.”
He stopped, and Robert turned over the substance of this worldly reasoning in his mind. Lester was very calm about it. He seemed, as usual, to be most convincingly sane.
“You’re not contemplating marrying her, are you?” queried Robert hesitatingly.
“I hadn’t come to that,” answered Lester coolly.
They looked at each other quietly for a moment, and then Robert turned his glance to the distant scene of the city.
“It’s useless to ask whether you are seriously in love with her, I suppose,” ventured Robert.
“I don’t know whether I’d be able to discuss that divine afflatus with you or not,” returned Lester, with a touch of grim humour. “I have never experienced the sensation myself. All I know is that the lady is very pleasing to me.”
“Well, it’s all a question of your own well-being and the family’s, Lester,” went on Robert, after another pause. “Morality doesn’t seem to figure in it anyway — at least you and I can’t discuss that together. Your feelings on that score naturally relate to you alone. But the matter of your own personal welfare seems to me to be substantial enough ground to base a plea on. The family’s feelings and pride are also fairly important. Father’s the kind of a man who sets more store by the honour of his family than most men. You know that as well as I do, of course.”
“I know how father feels about it,” returned Lester. “The whole business is as clear to me as it is to any of you, though off-hand I don’t see just what’s to be done about it. These matters aren’t always of a day’s growth, and they can’t be settled in a day. The girl’s here. To a certain extent I’m responsible that she is here. While I’m not willing to go into details, there’s always more in these affairs than appears on the court calendar.”
“Of course I don’t know what your relations with her have been,” returned Robert, “and I’m not curious to know, but it does look like a bit of injustice all around, don’t you think — unless you intend to marry her?” This last was put forth as a feeler.
“I might be willing to agree to that, too,” was Lester’s baffling reply, “if anything were to be gained by it. The point is, the woman is here, and the family is in possession of the fact. Now if there is anything to be done I have to do it. There isn’t anybody else who can act for me in this matter.”
Lester lapsed into a silence, and Robert rose and paced the floor, coming back after a time to say: “You say you haven’t any idea of marrying her — or rather you haven’t come to it. I wouldn’t, Lester. It seems to me you would be making the mistake of your life, from every point of view. I don’t want to orate, but a man of your position has so much to lose; you can’t afford to do it. Aside from family considerations, you have too much at stake. You’d be simply throwing your life away —”
He paused, with his right hand held out before him, as was customary when he was deeply in earnest, and Lester felt the candour and simplicity of this appeal. Robert was not criticising him now. He was making an appeal to him, and this was somewhat different.
The appeal passed without comment, however, and then Robert began on a new tack, this time picturing old Archibald’s fondness for Lester and the hope he had always entertained that he would marry some well-to-do Cincinnati girl, Catholic, if agreeable to him, but at least worthy of his station. And Mrs. Kane felt the same way; surely Lester must realise that.
“I know just how all of them feel about it,” Lester interrupted at last, “but I don’t see that anything’s to be done right now.”
“You mean that you don’t think it would be policy for you to give her up just at present?”
“I mean that she’s been exceptionally good to me, and that I’m morally under obligations to do the best I can by her. What that may be, I can’t tell.”
“To live with her?” inquired Robert coolly.
“Certainly not to turn her out bag and baggage if she has been accustomed to live with me,” replied Lester. Robert sat down again, as if he considered his recent appeal futile.
“Can’t family reasons persuade you to make some amicable arrangements with her and let her go?”
“Not without due consideration of the matter; no.”
“You don’t think you could hold out some hope that the thing will end quickly — something that would give me a reasonable excuse for softening down the pain of it to the family?”
“I would be perfectly willing to do anything which would take away the edge of this thing for the family, but the truth’s the truth, and I can’t see any room for equivocation between you and me. As I’ve said before, these relationships are involved with things which make it impossible to discuss them — unfair to me, unfair to the woman. No one can see how they are to be handled, except the people that are in them, and even they can’t always see. I’d be a damned dog to stand up here and give you my word to do anything except the best I can.”
Lester stopped, and now Robert rose and paced the floor again, only to come back after a time and say, “You don’t think there’s anything to be done just at present?”
“Not at present.”
“Very well, then, I expect I might as well be going. I don’t know that there’s anything else we can talk about.”
“Won’t you stay and take lunch with me? I think I might manage to get down to the hotel if you’ll stay.”
“No, thank you,” answered Robert. “I believe I can make that one o’clock train for Cincinnati. I’ll try, anyhow.”
They stood before each other now, Lester pale and rather flaccid, Robert, clear, wax-like, well-knit, and shrewd, and one could see the difference time had already made. Robert was the clean, decisive man, Lester the man of doubts. Robert was the spirit of business energy and integrity embodied, Lester the spirit of commercial self-sufficiency, looking at life with an uncertain eye. Together they made a striking picture, which was none the less powerful for the thoughts that were now running through their minds.
“Well,” said the older brother, after a time, “I don’t suppose there is anything more I can say. I had hoped to make you feel just as we do about this thing, but of course you are your own best judge of this. If you don’t see it now, nothing I could say would make you. It strikes me as a very bad move on your part though.”
Lester listened. He said nothing, but his face expressed an unchanged purpose.
Robert turned for his hat, and they walked to the office door together.
“I’ll put the best face I can on it,” said Robert, and walked out.
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