through the never ending throngs of lower Broadway, on his way to a little chop house in John Street, long famous for its English mutton chops and cream ale.
As he came abreast of the Singer Building, he felt someone grasp his arm from behind and heard a cheery voice, with a familiar ring about it, calling to him. He turned and looked into the handsome, smiling face of a tall bronzed man, whose costume indicated clearly that he hailed from the West.
“Billy West!” he exclaimed, gripping the new-comer’s hand joyfully. “Where on earth did you drop from? I thought you were in Colorado.”
“I was, until four days ago. Thought I’d come East for awhile and look the old town over. How’s everything?” His glance was full of smiling inquiry. “Making lots of money?”
“Not so much that I have to sit up nights thinking how to spend it,” replied Rogers, a trifle bitterly. “Had your lunch?”
“No. Didn’t want to eat alone. I’ve been away so long I hardly know a soul in this blessed burg.”
Rogers took his arm. “Come along with me,” he said. “I’m just on my way.”
West nodded. “Got to see my lawyers some time to-day, but later will do just as well.” In five minutes they were seated in the chop house, ordering luncheon.
“How are you getting along out there among the miners?” laughed Donald, as he dismissed the waiter with their order. “Hope you like it better than doing laboratory work down in Jersey. Ought to be wonderful opportunities for a man, out there.” He paused for a moment, thoughtful. “You know I always used to say, when we were in college, that I meant to go West some day. I’ve never got there, though. New York has become a habit, I’m afraid. Can’t seem to break away from it.”
West looked at his friend with a faintly quizzical smile, and hesitated for a moment, as though he almost feared to tell the other what had come into his mind. Then he leaned across the table, and his face suddenly became grave. “Don,” he said earnestly, “the luck I’ve had out there has been so wonderful, so almost unbelievable, that, even though it happened nearly two years ago, I still can hardly realize that it’s true.”
“Strike a gold mine?” inquired Rogers, with a laugh.
“That’s exactly what I did do, and believe me, Don, it’s some mine. We capitalized it last year at a million, of which yours truly, owns half, and it paid over five per cent. from the start. I haven’t got used to figuring up my income yet, but just at present I think it’s running pretty close to thirty thousand a year, and more coming.” He leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “I’m vice-president of the concern. The Lone Star mine, it’s called, up on the Little Ash river; but I haven’t anything much to do with the management – leave all that to the Boston crowd that put in the money. They’re a fine, conservative lot of fellows, with plenty of experience, and I know my interests are perfectly safe in their hands. So you see, I’m a sort of a gentleman of leisure just at present, with plenty of money to spend, and nobody in particular to spend it on, so I thought I’d take a run down to little old New York and put in a year or so getting acquainted with some of my old friends. I was on my way to my lawyers, as I said, when I met you, and, after attending to a little matter of business, I was coming right up to your office to see you. I looked up your address in the telephone book.”
Donald, who by this time had succeeded in digesting this remarkable piece of news, reached across the table and took his friend’s hand. “Billy,” he said, with a look which left no doubt as to the sincerity of his feelings, “congratulations from the bottom of my heart.”
“Thanks, old man. I knew you would be glad to know about my good luck.” He attacked the chop, which the waiter set before him with a flourish. “And now tell me about yourself. How’s your wife, and the boy – it was a boy, wasn’t it? The happy event occurred just before I went West, and I’m not exactly sure.” He flashed on Rogers one of those brilliant smiles which had always made him loved by both sexes, and particularly the one in petticoats.
“Edith is very well, and the boy is fine. I don’t wonder you did not remember. They will be delighted to see you. Why not come up to dinner to-night. We can’t offer you a feast, but you won’t mind taking pot luck.”
“Well, I should say not. I was hoping you would ask me. You can’t imagine how lost I feel in this town. I suppose it would be different if I had any family, but you know I haven’t even a second cousin I can call my own. I’ve often thought of you and Edith. You know that she might have been Mrs. West, once, years ago, if you hadn’t stepped in and taken her away from me. I’d have been jealous of anyone but you, Don, but I guess the best man won.” He laughed with a hearty frankness, and took up his mug of ale. “Here’s to the youngster. May he live long and prosper.”
Donald drained his glass. “I suppose you will be busy for a couple of hours,” he said, “with your legal matters. Why not come up to my office when you get through – I’m in the Columbia Building, you know – and we’ll go up-town together?”
“I’ll do it. We can stop at my hotel on the way, and give me a chance to clean up a bit. I only got in this morning on the sleeper, you know, and I feel a bit grubby.”
Some half-hour later they were making their way slowly toward Broadway. “What a great town it is, after all!” remarked West, as they turned the corner at John Street. “Every time a fellow goes away for a few years they seem to build it all over again before he gets back.” He turned to look at the towering mass of the Singer Building. “That’s a new one on me. Wouldn’t it make some of my friends back in Colorado have cricks in their backs?”
“It is a wonderful city,” replied Rogers grimly. “I don’t think I should ever care about living anywhere else, but the man who wins out in it has got to deliver the goods. Big as it is, there is no room in it for failures.” He waved his hand to West as the latter turned into Wall Street. “See you around four-thirty. So long.”
“I’ll be there. Wait for me if I’m a little late,” was the reply, as the two separated.
Donald went back to his plain little office and his power-transmission problem with a curious feeling of futility. Thirteen years of hard work had given him but little more than the right to fight that never ceasing battle with the grim city which could excuse anything but failure. West – pleasure-loving Billy West – who from his freshman days had looked upon the world as little more than an amazing joke, had by one stroke of fortune suddenly found all the pleasures, all the luxuries that life contained, at his feet. He did not envy West this good fortune, he was too staunch a friend for that, but he thought of Edith, and their little up-town flat, and as her tired face rose before him he suffered the pangs of that greatest of all forms of poverty, the inability to do for those we love.
CHAPTER III
During the year that preceded her marriage to Donald Rogers, Edith had seen a great deal of Billy West, and had liked him more than anyone except herself had realized. His was a personality, indeed, to compel the admiration of women. Tall, good-looking, of a reckless and laughter-loving type, he naturally appealed to that peculiar chord in the feminine make-up which responds so readily to the Cavalier in the opposite sex, while paying scant attention to the sturdy adherence to duty characteristic of his Roundhead adversary. For this reason, it is probable that, at one period of Donald’s courtship, she would have listened more kindly to the love-making of his friend, had the latter, indeed, seen fit to make any. That he did not was due to no Quixotic sense of friendship for Donald, but to a very real and honest belief on his part that marriage on the slender pay of an assistant chemist was not for one of his type, an opinion in which he was entirely correct. Therefore he had hidden his love, which was in truth a real and lasting one, beneath his careless laughter, and had gone to Colorado when the occasion offered, neither heart whole nor fancy free, but just as determined to make much money with the utmost quickness as though he and Edith Pope had never laid eyes upon each other. After all, he and Edith were very much alike. They belonged to that class which demands of life its luxuries almost before its necessities, and it is a curious fact that they nearly always get them.
After eight