The Dominant Dollar

CHAPTER I. A Prophecy

A PROPHECY

"You're cold-blooded as a fish, Roberts, colder. You're--There is no adequate simile."

The man addressed said nothing.

"You degrade every consideration in life, emotional and other, to a dollar-and-cents basis. Sentiment, ambition, common judgment of right and wrong, all gravitate to the same level. You have a single standard of measurement that you apply to all alike, which alike condemns or justifies. Summer and Winter, morning, noon, and night--it's the same. Your little yardstick is always in evidence, measuring, measuring--You, confound you, drive me to distraction with your eternal 'does it pay.'"

Still the other man said nothing.

"I know," apologetically, "I'm rubbing it in pretty hard, Darley, but I can't help it. You exasperate me beyond my boiling point at times and I simply can't avoid bubbling over. I believe if by any possibility you were ever to have a romance in your life, and it came on slowly enough so you could analyze a bit in advance, you'd still get out your tape line and tally up to the old mark: would it pay!"

This time the other smiled, a smile of tolerant amusement.

"And why shouldn't I? Being merely the fish you suggest, it seems to me that that's the one time in a human being's life when, more than another, deliberation is in order. The wider the creek the longer the wise man will linger on the margin to estimate the temperature of the current in event of failure to reach the opposite bank. Inadvertently, Armstrong, you pass me a compliment. Merely as an observer, marriage looks to me like the longest leap a sane man will ever attempt."

"I expected you'd say that," shortly,--"predicted it."

"You give me credit for being consistent, then, at least."

"Yes, you're consistent all right."

"Thanks. That's the first kind word I've heard in a long time."

The other made a wry face.

"Don't thank me," he excepted. "I'm not at all sure I meant the admission to be complimentary; in fact I hardly think I did. I was hoping for once I'd find you napping, without your measuring stick. In other words--find you--human."

"And now you're convinced the case is hopeless?"

"Convinced, yes, if I thought you were serious."

Roberts laughed, a big-chested, tolerant laugh.

"Seems to me you ought to realize by this time that I am serious, Armstrong. You've known me long enough. Do you still fancy I've been posing these last five years you've known me?"

"No; you never pose, Darley. This is a compliment, I think; moreover, it's the reason most of all why I like you." He laughed in turn, unconsciously removing the sting from the observation following. "I can't see any other possible excuse for our being friends. We're as different as night is from day."

The criticism was not new, and Roberts said nothing.

"I wonder now and then, at times like this," remarked Armstrong, "how long we will stick together. It's been five years, as you say. I wonder if it'll be another five."

The smile vanished from Darley Roberts' eyes, leaving them shrewd and gray.

"I wonder," he repeated.

"It'll come some time, the break. It's inevitable. We're fundamentally too different to avoid a clash."

"You think so?"

"I know so. It's written."

"And when we do?"

"We'll hate each other--as much as we like each other now. That, too, is written."

Again Roberts laughed. A listener would have read self-confidence therein.

"If that's the case, wouldn't it be wiser for us to separate in advance and avoid the horrors of civil war? I'll move out and leave you in peaceful possession of our cave if you wish."

"No; I don't want you to. I need you. That's another compliment. You hold me down to earth. You're a helpful influence, Darley, providing one knows you and takes you with allowance."

The comment was whimsical, but beneath was a deeper, more tacit admission which both men understood, that drowned the surface banter of the words.

"I think again, sometimes," drifted on Armstrong, "that if the powers which are could only put us both in a pot as I put things together down in the laboratory, and melt us good and shake us up, so, until we were all mixed into one, it would make a better product than either of us as we are now."

"Perhaps," equivocally.

"But that's the curse of it. The thing can't be done. The Lord put us here, you you, and me me, and we've got to stick it out to the end."

"And become enemies in the course of events."

"Yes," quickly, "but let's not think about it. It'll come soon enough; and meantime--" The sentence halted while with unconscious skill Armstrong rolled a cigarette--"and meantime," he repeated as he scratched a match and waited for the sulphur to burn free, "I want to use you." Again the sentence halted while he blew a cloud of smoke: "I had another offer to-day."

Following the other's example, Roberts lit a cigar, big and black, and sat puffing in judicial expectancy.

"It's what you'd call a darned good offer," explained Armstrong: "position as chemist to the Graham Specialty Company, who are building the factory over on the East side--perfumes and toilet preparations and that sort of thing."

"Yes."

"Graham himself came to see me. As a matter of fact he's the whole company. He labored with me for two hours. I had to manufacture an engagement out of whole cloth to get away."

"And you decided--"

"I didn't decide. I took the matter under advisement."

"Which means that you did decide after all."

Armstrong grimaced in a mannerism all his own, an action that ended in an all-expressive shrug. "I suppose so," he admitted reluctantly.

"I hardly see where I can be of service then," commented the other. "If you were ten years younger and a minor and I your guardian--"

"You might point out with your yardstick how many kinds of an idiot I am and stir me up."

His companion smiled; as suddenly the look passed.

"I'd do so cheerfully if it would do any good. As it is--" The sentence ended in comprehensive silence. "What, by the way, did Graham offer?"

"Five thousand dollars a year, and if I made good an interest later in the business. He said four thousand dollars to begin with and gradually crawled up."

"You're getting now from the University--"

"Twelve hundred."

"With ultimate possibilities,--I emphasize possibilities--"

"I'll be dean of the department some day if I stick."

"With a salary of two thousand a year."

Armstrong nodded.

"And that's the end, the top round of the ladder if you were to remain until you were fifty and were displaced eventually without a pension."

"Yes; that's the biggest plum on the university tree. It can't grow anything larger."

In his place Darley Roberts dropped back as though he had nothing to say. Involuntarily, with a nervous impatience distinctive of him, his fingers tapped twice on the edge of the chair; then, aroused to attention, the hand lay still.

"Well?" commented Armstrong at length.

Roberts merely looked at him, not humorously nor with intent to tantalize, but with unconscious analysis written large upon his face.

"Well?" repeated Armstrong, "I'm waiting. The floor is yours."

"I was merely wondering," slowly, "how it would seem to be a person like you. I can't understand."

"No, you can't, Darley. As I said a moment ago, we're different as day is from night."

"I was wondering another thing, too, Armstrong. Do you want to know what it was?"

"Yes; I know in advance I'll not have to blush at a compliment."

"I don't know about that. I'm not the judge. I merely anticipated in fancy the time when you will wake up. You will some day. It's inevitable. To borrow your phrase, 'it's written.'"

"You think so?" The accompanying smile was appreciative.

"I know so. It's life we're living, not fiction."

"And when I do--pardon me--come out of it?" The questioner was still smiling.

"That's what I was speculating on." Again the impatient fingers tapped on the chair, and again halted at their own alarm. "You'll either be a genius and blossom in a day, or be a dead failure and go to the devil by the shortest route."

"You think there's no possible middle trail?"

"Not for you. You're not built that way."

The prediction was spoken with finality--too much finality to be taken humorously. Responsively, bit by bit, the smile left Armstrong's face.

"I won't attempt to answer that, Darley, or to defend myself. To come back to the point, you think I'm a fool not to accept Graham's offer?"

As before, his companion shrugged unconsciously. That was all.

"Does it occur to you that I might possibly have a reason--one that, while it wouldn't show up well under your tape line, to me seems adequate?"

"I'm not immune to reason."

"You'd like to have me put it in words?"

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