“I want to! I want to! Right away!” cried Tommy, loudly.
“I looked,” pursued Mr. Leigh, monotonously, “in the Herald for 'Help Wanted—Male.' I got my position with the bank that way, and I've been there ever since.”
“I will! Where is the Herald?” said Tommy, without looking at his father. He was afraid to see and to be seen.
“I'll send in one from the corner. I must go now, Thomas.”
The fear of being left alone, with his problems unsolved, with his fears uncalmed, alone with the consciousness of utter helplessness, made Tommy say, wildly:
“But, father, I—You—I—” He ceased to flounder. It was not pleasant to look upon his young face, pallid, drawn, with the nostrils pinched as with physical pain, and fear made visible, almost palpable, in ten thousand ways.
“I must go! I must be in the bank—before the cashier. I—I—I have done it since—since you went to Prep.-School.” The old man nodded his head with a pitiful weariness.
“But, father—” cried Tommy.
“I must go!” There was a pause. Then in a firmer voice: “Don't lose your grip, my son. I alone am responsible for my actions. I have done my duty by her. From now on you must fight your own fights. I'll send in the Herald. And, my son—”
“Yes?” said Tommy, eagerly. What he prayed for was a miracle. He wished to hear that there was no immediate danger.
“You will need some pocket mo—”
“No! No!” shrieked Tommy Leigh. His voice was shrill as a little boy's.
Mr. Leigh's fists, unseen by Tommy, clenched tightly. But his voice had an apologetic note. “Very well, my son. I—I must be in the bank before—You must be a man. Good-by, my son!”
Without another look at his only son Mr. Leigh walked out of the room, his face grim, his lips pressed tightly together, his fists clenching and unclenching.
CHAPTER II
MAGGIE brought the Herald to Tommy. He had remained in the library, trying to think. When he discovered that he couldn't he rose and walked about the gloomy little room, angry with himself because his emotions prevented the cogs of his mind-machine from falling into their appointed places. He decided that he must face his problem squarely, systematically, calmly, efficiently.
The first thing to do was not to walk about the library like a wild beast in a menagerie cage. He lit a cigarette and resolutely sat down.
He smoked away, and compelled himself to understand that his problem consisted in evolving a plan or a set of plans having for an object the accumulation of money. The amount was seventeen thousand dollars, since that was what he had cost his father. It was there in black and white, to the last penny, in the little book bound in mourning morocco.
He stretched his hand toward the little book on the table, but drew it back, empty. He would not read the items. It didn't matter how the money had been spent. It was enough to know that all of it must be paid back.
Seventeen thousand dollars! It did not mean any more to Tommy than five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or any other number of dollars.
He lit another cigarette. Presently the fear came upon him that it might take a long time to earn the money, to earn any money. Discovery, the discovery he so dreaded, had fleet feet. He must do something—and do it at once.
He took up the Herald and read the “Help Wanted—Male” column. He began at the first line, and as he read on he was filled with surprise at the number of men wanted by employers. He marked two private secretaryships and a dozen selling agencies, which divulged no details, but promised great and quick wealth to the right man. He knew that he would work like a cyclone. He, therefore, must be the right man. In fact, he knew he was! And then he came upon this:
Wanted—A College Man. No high-brow, no football hero, no Happy Jack, no erudite scholar, but a Man recently graduated from College, whose feet are on terra firma and the head not more than six feet one inch above same. If he is a Man to-day we shall make him into The Man We Want to-morrow. Apply X-Y-Z, P. O. Box 777, Dayton, Ohio.
Thomas Leigh thrilled. It was a wonderful message. He clenched his own fist to prove to himself that he himself was a man. He was willing to do anything, therefore it did not matter what “X-Y-Z” wanted him to do. And also this was in Dayton, Ohio. Whatever he did must be done far away from New York. He hated New York because all the people he loved lived there.
He was about to light another cigarette when the thought came to him that smoking was one of the habits he must give up as entailing unnecessary expense. Unnecessary expenses meant delay in the full settlement of the debt he had taken upon himself to pay. He threw the unlighted cigarette on the table vindictively. He would work at anything, night and day, like a madman!
Thrilled by the intensity of his own resolve, his mind began to work feverishly. He was no longer Tommy Leigh, but a man who did his thinking in staccato exclamations. He sat down at his father's desk and wrote what he could not have written the day before to save his life, for he now saw himself as the man in Dayton evidently saw him.
X-Y-Z, Dayton, Ohio:
Sir—I graduated from college last week. I am a twenty-one-year-old man now. I will be Man until I shall be my own Man—and then perhaps yours also. Ego plus Knowledge equals Xnth. Thomas Leigh,
West Twelfth Street,
New York City.
He addressed the envelope, stamped it, and went out to drop it at the corner letter-box. He did not intend to lose time. He realized, as firmly as if he had been writing business aphorisms for a living, that time was money. And he needed both.
As soon as the letter was in the box he felt that his life's work had begun. This lifted a great weight from his chest. He now could breathe deeply. He did so. The oxygen filled his lungs. That brought back composure—he was doing all he could. The consciousness of this gave him courage.
Courage has an inveterate habit of growing. By feeding on itself it waxes greater, and thus its food-supply is never endangered. By the time Tommy Leigh returned to his house, once the abode of fear, he was so brave that he could think calmly. Thinking calmly is always conducive to thinking forgivingly, and forgiveness strengthens love.
“Poor old dad!” he said, and thought of how his father had loved his mother and what he had done for his only son. He would stick to his father through thick and thin.
That much settled, Tommy thought of himself. That made him think of the luncheon at Sherry's with Rivington Willetts. Marion Willetts would be there. For a moment he thought he must beg off. It was like going to a cabaret in deep mourning. But he reasoned that since he was going to Dayton, this would be his social swansong, the leave-taking of his old life, his final farewell to boyhood and Dame Pleasure.
He was glad he had told his father he would not accept any more money. He counted his cash. He had eleven dollars and seventy cents. He was glad he had so little. It cheered him so that he was able to dress with great care; but before he did so he answered some of the other advertisements.
At the luncheon he was a pleasant-faced chap, well set-up, with an air of youth rather than of juvenility, as though he were a young business man. If he had not come naturally by it this impression of business manhood might have degenerated into one of those unfortunate assumptions of superiority that so irritate in the young because the old know that age is nothing to be proud of, age with its implied wisdom being the most exasperating of all fallacies.
With