never forget it, Mort, never! You’re the salt of the earth – ”
“There, there, Dicky. Salt should be taken in pinches, not by the spoonful, and you’ve mussed my cravat! Be off with you and don’t come back here until matrimony has sobered you into a proper sense of your new responsibilities to your Creator.”
From the window of his apartment Crabb watched Dicky’s taxi spin up the avenue in the direction of the modest boarding-house which sheltered the waiting bride, then turned with a heavy sigh and rang for McFee. Love like that never comes to the very rich. He, Mortimer Crabb, was not a sentient being, but only a chattel, an animated bank account upon which designing matrons cast envious eyes and for which ambitious daughters laid their pretty snares. No, love like that was not for him – or ever would be, it seemed.
His toilet made, Crabb strolled out for the air, wondering as he often did how the people on the street could smile their way through life, while he —
A hansom passed, turned just beyond and drew up at the curb beside him, and a voice addressed him.
“Crabb! Mortimer Crabb! By all that’s lucky!”
“Ross Burnett!” said Crabb, gladly. “I thought that you were dead. Have you dropped from heaven, man?”
“No,” laughed Ross, “not so far, only from China.”
Burnett dismissed the hansom at once and together they went to the Bachelors’ Club near by, where, over a friendly glass, they gathered up the loose ends of their friendship. Crabb listened with new interest as his old friend gave him an account of what had happened in the five years which had intervened since they had last met, recalling piece by piece the unfortunate events which had led to his departure from New York, and Burnett, glad of receptive ears, rehearsed it for him.
The boy had squandered his patrimony in Wall Street. Then by the grace of one of the senators from New York he obtained from the President an appointment as consular clerk, an office, which if it paid but little at home carried with it some dignity, a little authority, and certain appreciable perquisites in foreign ports.
He had chosen wisely. At Cairo, where he had been sent to fill a temporary vacancy caused by the death of the consul general and subsequent illness of his deputy, he found himself suddenly in charge of the consular office in the fullest press of business, with diplomatic functions requiring both ingenuity and discretion.
After all, it was very simple. The business of a consulate was child’s play, and the usual phases in the life of a diplomat were to be requisitely met by the usages of gentility – a quality Burnett discovered was not too amply possessed by those political gentlemen who sat abroad in the posts of honor to represent the great republic.
He thought that if he could get a post, however small, with plenary powers, he would be happy. But, alas! He had been away from home so long that he didn’t even know whether his senator was dead or alive, and when he reached Washington, a month or so after the inauguration, he realized how small were his chances for preferment.
The President and Secretary of State were besieged daily by powerful politicians, and one by one the posts coveted, even the smallest of them, were taken by frock-coated, soft-hatted, flowing-tied gentlemen, whom he had noticed lounging and chewing tobacco in the Willard Hotel lobby. It was apparently with such persons that power took preferment. His roseate dreams vanished. Ross Burnett was a mere State Department drudge again at twelve hundred a year!
He told Crabb that he had spoken to the chief of the diplomatic bureau in despair.
“Isn’t there any way, Crowthers?” he had asked. “Can’t a fellow ever get any higher?”
“If he had a pull, he might – but a consular clerk – ” The shake of Crowthers’ head was eloquent.
“Isn’t there anything a fellow – even a consular clerk – could do to win promotion in this service?” he continued.
Crowthers had looked at him quizzically.
“Yes, there’s one thing. If you could do that, you might ask the Secretary for anything you wanted.”
“And that – ”
“Get the text of the treaty between Germany and China from Baron Arnim.”
Crowthers had chuckled. Crabb chuckled, too. He thought it a very good joke. Baron Arnim had been the special envoy of Germany to China, accredited to the court of the Eastern potentate with the special mission of formulating a new and secret treaty between these monarchs. He was now returning home carrying a copy of this document in his baggage.
Burnett had laughed. It was a good joke.
“You’d better send me out again,” Burnett had said, hopelessly. “Anything from Arakan to Zanzibar will do for me.”
Crabb listened to the story with renewed marks of appreciation.
“So you’ve been out and doing in the world, after all?” he said, languidly, “while we —eheu jam satis!– have glutted ourselves with the stale and unprofitable. How I envy you!”
Burnett smoked silently. It was very easy to envy from the comfortable vantage ground of a hundred and fifty thousand a year.
“Why, man, if you knew how sick of it all I am,” sighed Crabb, “you’d thank your stars for the lucky dispensation that took you out of it. Rasselas was right. I’ve been pursuing the phantoms of hope for thirty years, and I’m still hopeless. There have been a few bright spots” – Crabb smiled at his cigar ash – “a very few, and far between.”
“Bored as ever, Crabb?”
“Immitigably. To live in the thick of things and see nothing but the pale drabs and grays. No red anywhere. Oh, for a passion that would burn and sear – love, hate, fear! I’m forever courting them all. And here I am still cool, colorless and unscarred. Only once” – his gray eyes lit up marvelously – “only once did I learn the true relation of life to death, Burnett; only once. That was when the Blue Wing struggled six days in a hurricane with Hatteras under her lee. It was glorious. They may talk of love and hate as they will; fear, I tell you, is the Titan of passions.”
Burnett was surprised at this unmasking.
“You should try big game,” he said, carelessly.
“I have,” said the other; “both beasts and men – and here I am in flannels and a red tie! I’ve skinned the one and been skinned by the other – to what end?”
“You’ve bought experience.”
“Cheap at any cost. You can’t buy fear. Love comes in varieties at the market values. Hate can be bought for a song; but fear, genuine and amazing, is priceless – a gem which only opportunity can provide; and how seldom opportunity knocks at any man’s door!”
“Crabb the original – the esoteric!”
“Yes. The same. The very same. And you, how different! How sober and rounded!”
There was a silence, contemplative, retrospective on both their parts. Crabb broke it.
“Tell me, old man,” he said, “about your position. Isn’t there any chance?”
Burnett smiled a little bitterly.
“I’m a consular clerk at twelve hundred a year during good behavior. When I’ve said that, I’ve said it all.”
“But your future?”
“I’m not in line of promotion.”
“Impossible! Politics?”
“Exactly. I’ve no pull to speak of.”
“But your service?”
“I’ve been paid for that.”
“Isn’t there any other way?”
“Oh, yes,” Burnett laughed, “that treaty. I happened to know something about it when I was out there. It has to do with neutrality, trade ports and coaling stations; but just what, the devil only knows, and his deputy,