CHAPTER XL
Lester returned to Chicago. He realized that
he had offended his father
seriously, how seriously he could not say. In all his personal relations with
old Archibald he had never seen him so worked up. But even now Lester did
not feel that the breach was irreparable; he hardly realized that it was
necessary for him to act decisively if he hoped to retain his father's affection
and confidence. As for the world at large,
what did it matter how much
people talked or what they said. He was big enough to stand alone. But was
he? People turn so quickly from weakness or the shadow of it. To get away
from failure—even the mere suspicion of it—that seems to be a
subconscious feeling with the average man and woman; we all avoid non-
success as though we fear that it may prove contagious. Lester was soon to
feel the force of this prejudice.
One day Lester happened to run across Berry Dodge, the millionaire head of
Dodge, Holbrook & Kingsbury, a firm that
stood in the dry-goods world,
where the Kane Company stood in the carriage world. Dodge had been one
of Lester's best friends. He knew him as intimately as he knew Henry
Bracebridge, of Cleveland, and George Knowles, of Cincinnati. He visited at
his handsome home on the North Shore Drive, and they met constantly in a
business and social way. But since Lester had moved out to Hyde Park, the
old intimacy had lapsed. Now they came face to face on Michigan Avenue
near the Kane building.
"Why, Lester, I'm glad to see you again," said Dodge.
He extended a formal hand, and seemed just a little cool. "I hear you've gone
and married since I saw you."
"No, nothing like that," replied Lester, easily, with the air of one who prefers
to be understood in the way of the world sense.
"Why so secret about it, if you have?" asked Dodge, attempting to smile, but
with a wry twist to the corners of his mouth.
He was trying to be nice, and to
go through a difficult situation gracefully. "We fellows usually make a fuss
about that sort of thing. You ought to let your friends know."
"Well," said Lester, feeling the edge of the social blade that was being driven
into him, "I thought I'd do it in a new way. I'm not much for excitement in
that direction, anyhow."
"It is a matter of taste, isn't it?" said Dodge a little absently. "You're living in
the city, of course?"
"In Hyde Park."
"That's a pleasant territory. How are things otherwise?" And he deftly
changed the subject before waving him a perfunctory farewell.
Lester missed at once the inquiries which
a man like Dodge would have
made if he had really believed that he was married. Under ordinary
circumstances his friend would have wanted to know a great deal about the
new Mrs. Kane. There would have been all those little familiar touches
common to people living on the same social plane. Dodge would have asked
Lester to bring his wife over to see them, would have definitely promised to
call. Nothing of the sort happened, and Lester
noticed the significant
omission.
It was the same with the Burnham Moores, the Henry Aldriches, and a score
of other people whom he knew equally well. Apparently they all thought that
he had married and settled down. They were interested to know where he
was living, and they were rather disposed to joke him about being so very
secretive on the subject, but they were not willing to discuss the supposed
Mrs. Kane. He was beginning to see that this move of his was going to tell
against him notably.
One of the worst stabs—it was the cruelest because, in a way, it was the
most unintentional—he received from an old acquaintance, Will Whitney, at
the Union Club. Lester was dining there one evening, and Whitney met him
in the main reading-room as he was crossing
from the cloak-room to the
cigar-stand. The latter was a typical society figure, tall, lean, smooth-faced,
immaculately garbed, a little cynical, and to-night a little the worse for
liquor. "Hi, Lester!" he called out, "what's this talk about a ménage of yours
out in Hyde Park? Say, you're going some. How are you going to explain all
this to your wife when you get married?"
"I don't have to explain it," replied Lester irritably. "Why should you be so
interested in my affairs? You're
not living in a stone house, are you?"
"Say, ha! ha! that's pretty good now, isn't it? You didn't marry that little
beauty you used to travel around with on the North Side, did you? Eh, now!
Ha, ha! Well, I swear. You married! You didn't, now, did you?"
"Cut it out, Whitney," said Lester roughly. "You're talking wild."
"Pardon, Lester," said the other aimlessly, but sobering. "I beg your pardon.
Remember, I'm just a little warm. Eight whisky-sours straight in the other
room there. Pardon. I'll talk to you some time when I'm all right. See, Lester?
Eh! Ha! ha! I'm
a little loose, that's right. Well, so long! Ha! ha!"
Lester could not get over that cacophonous "ha! ha!" It cut him, even though
it came from a drunken man's mouth. "That little beauty you used to travel
with on the North Side. You didn't marry her, did you?" He quoted Whitney's
impertinences resentfully. George! But this was getting a little rough! He had
never endured anything like this before—he, Lester Kane. It set him
thinking. Certainly he was paying dearly for trying to do the kind thing by
Jennie.
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