It was Mr. Daney's task to place the call for Nan Brent in New York City and while he did not relish the assignment, nevertheless he was far from shrinking from it. While the citizens of Port Agnew had been aware for more than two years that transcontinental telephoning was possible, they knew also that three minutes of conversation for twenty-five dollars tended to render silence more or less golden. As yet, therefore, no one in Port Agnew had essayed the great adventure; wherefore, Mr. Daney knew that when he did his conversation would be listened to eagerly by every telephone operator in the local office and a more or less garbled report of same circulated through the town before morning unless he took pains to prevent it. This he resolved to do, for the Tyee Lumber Company owned the local telephone company and it was quite generally understood in Port Agnew that Mr. Daney was high, low, and jack and the game, to use a sporting expression.
He stood by the telephone a moment after hanging up the receiver, and tugged at his beard reflectively.
"No," he murmured presently, "I haven't time to motor up-country forty or fifty miles and place the call in some town where we are not known. It just isn't going to be possible to smother this miserable affair; sooner or later the lid is going to fly off, so I might as well be game and let the tail go with the hide. Oh, damn it, damn it! If I didn't feel fully responsible for this dreadful state of affairs, I would most certainly stand from under!"
He turned from the 'phone and beheld Mrs. Daney, alert of countenance and fairly pop-eyed with excitement. She grasped her husband by the arm.
"You have a private line from the mill office to The Dreamerie," she reminded him. "Have the call run in on your office telephone, then call Mrs. McKaye, and switch her in. We can listen on the office extensions."
Upon his spouse Mr. Daney bent a look of profound contempt.
"When I consider the loyalty, the love, the forebearance, and Christian charity that have been necessary to restrain me from tearing asunder that which God, in a careless moment, joined together, Mary, I'm inclined to regard myself as four-fifths superman and the other fifth pure angel," he declared coldly. "This is something you're not in on, woman, and I hope the strain of your curiosity will make you sick for a week."
He seized his hat and fled, leaving his wife to shed bitter, scalding tears at his cruel words. Poor thing! She prided herself upon being the possessor of a superior brand of virtue and was always quick to take refuge in tears when any one decried that virtue; indeed, she never felt quite so virtuous as when she clothed herself, so to speak, in an atmosphere of patient resignation to insult and misunderstanding. People who delude themselves into the belief that they can camouflage their own nastiness and weaknesses from discovery by intelligent persons are the bane of existence, and in his better half poor Daney had a heavy cross to bear.
He left the house wishing he might dare to bawl aloud with anguish at the knowledge that he was yoked for life to a woman of whom he was secretly ashamed; he wished he might dare to get fearfully intoxicated and remain in that condition for a long time. In his youth, he had been shy and retiring, always envying the favor which the ladies appeared to extend to the daring devils of his acquaintance; consequently, his prenuptial existence had not been marked by any memorable amourous experiences, for where other young men sowed wild oats Mr. Daney planted a sweet forget-me-not. As a married man, he was a model of respectability--sacrosanct, almost. His idea of worldly happiness consisted in knowing that he was a solid, trustworthy business man, of undoubted years and discretion, whom no human being could blackmail. Now, as he fled from the odor of respectability he yearned to wallow in deviltry, to permit his soul, so long cramped in virtue, to expand in wickedness.
On his way down-town he met young Bert Darrow, son of the man after whom the adjacent lumber-town had been christened. Mr. Darrow had recently been indicted under the Mann law for a jolly little interstate romance. But yesterday, Mr. Daney had regarded Bert Darrow as a wastrel and had gone a block out of his way to avoid the scapegrace; to-night, however, Bert appealed to him as a man of courage, a devil of a fellow with spirit, a lover of life in its infinite moods and tenses, a lad with a fine contempt for public opinion and established morals. Morals? Bah, what were they! In France, Bert Darrow would have earned for himself a wink and a shrug, as though to say: "Ah, these young fellows! One must watch out for the rascals!" In the United States, he was a potential felon.
"Evening, Bert," Mr. Daney saluted him pleasantly, and paused long enough to shake the latter's hand. "I saw your ad in the Seattle
P.I. this morning. You young dog! Hope you crawl out of that mess all right."
"
C'est la guerre," Bert murmured nonchalantly. "Thanks, awfully."
Mr. Daney felt better after that brief interview. He had clasped hands with sin and felt now like a human being.
He went directly to the local telephone office and placed his New York call with the chief operator, after which he sat in the manager's office and smoked until ten o'clock, when New York reported "Ready!"
"You young ladies," said Mr. Daney, addressing the two young women on duty, "may take a walk around the block. Port Agnew will not require any service for the next twenty minutes."
They assimilated his hint, and when he was alone with the chief operator Mr. Daney ordered her to switch the New York call on to Mrs. McKaye at The Dreamerie. Followed ten minutes of "Ready, Chicago." "All right, New York. Put your party on the line!"--a lot of persistent buzzing and sudden silence. Then: "Hello, Port Agnew."
Mr. Daney, listening on the extension in the office of the manager, recognized the voice instantly as Nan Brent's.
"Go on, Mrs. McKaye," he ordered. "That's the Brent girl calling Port Agnew."
"Hello, Miss Brent. This is Donald McKaye's mother speaking. Can you hear me distinctly?"
"Yes, Mrs. McKaye, quite distinctly."
"Donald is ill with typhoid fever. We are afraid he is not going to get well, Miss Brent. The doctors say that is because he does not want to live. Do you understand why this should be?"
"Yes; I think I understand perfectly."
"Will you come back to Port Agnew and help save him? We all think you can do it, Miss Brent. The doctors say you are the only one that can save him." There was a moment of hesitation. "His family desires this, then?" "Would I telephone across the continent if we did not?"
"I'll come, Mrs. McKaye--for his sake and yours. I suppose you understand why I left Port Agnew. If not, I will tell you. It was for his sake and that of his family."
"Thank you. I am aware of that, Miss Brent. Ah--of course you will be amply reimbursed for your time and trouble, Miss Brent. When he is well--when all danger of a relapse has passed--I think you realize, Miss Brent, all of the impossible aspects of this unfortunate affair which render it necessary to reduce matters strictly to a business basis."
"Quite, dear Mrs. McKaye. I shall return to Port Agnew--on business--starting to-morrow morning. If I arrive in time, I shall do my best to save your son, although to do so I shall probably have to promise not to leave him again. Of course, I realize that you do not expect me to keep that promise."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, my dear girl, that I cannot say 'No' to that. But then, since you realized, in the first place, how impossible"
"Good-night. I must pack my trunk."
"Just a minute, my girl," Andrew Daney interrupted. "Daney speaking. When you get to Chicago, call up the C.M. St. P. station. I'll have a special train waiting there for you."
"Thank you, Mr. Daney. I'm sorry you cannot charter an airplane for me from New York to Chicago. Good-night, and tell Donald for me whatever you please."
"Send him a telegram," Daney pleaded. "Good-by." He turned to the chief operator and looked her squarely in the eyes. "The Laird likes discreet young women," he announced meaningly, "and rewards discretion. If you're not the highest paid chief operator in the state of Washington from this on, I'm a mighty poor guesser."
The girl smiled at him, and suddenly, for the first time in all his humdrum existence, Romance gripped Mr. Daney. He was riotously happy--and courageous! He thrust a finger under the girl's chin and tilted it in a most familiar manner, at the same time pinching it with his thumb.
"Young woman," he cautioned her, "don't you ever be prim and smug! And don't you ever marry any man until you're perfectly wild to do it; then, were he the devil himself, follow your own natural impulses." He let go her chin and shook his forefinger between her eyes. "I'd rather be happy than virtuous," the amazing man continued. "The calm placidity that comes of a love of virtue and the possession of it makes me sick! Such people are dull and stupid. They play hide-and-seek with themselves, I tell you. Suspicious little souls peering out of windows and shocked to death at everything they see or hear--condemn everything they do not understand. Damn it, girl, give me the virtue that's had to fight like the devil to stay on its feet--the kind that's been scratched and has had the corners knocked off in contact with the world and still believes that God made man to his own image and likeness. I tell you, the Lord knew what he was about when he invented the devil. If he hadn't, we'd all be so nasty-nice nobody could trust the other fellow further'n you can throw a bear up-hill by the tail. I tell you, young woman, sin is a great institution. Why, just think of all the fun we have in life--we good people--forgiving our neighbor his trespasses as he does not forgive us for trespassing against him."
And with this remarkable statement, Mr. Daney betook himself to his home. Mrs. Daney, a trifle red and watery about the eyes and nose, sat up in bed and demanded to be informed what had kept him down-town so late.
"Would you sleep any better if you knew?" he demanded.
She said she would not.
"Then, woman, resign yourself to the soft embrace of Bacchus, the god of sleep," he replied, mixed metaphorically. "As for me, my dear, I'm all talked out!"