Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "'Dalyrimple Goes Wrong'" by F. Scott Fitzgerald"

DALYRIMPLE GOES WRONG

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

The following story is reprinted from Flappers and Philosophers. F.
Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.

In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be given
to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This work will have
the flavor of Montaigne's essays and Samuel Butler's note-books -- and
a little of Tolstoi and Marcus Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful
nor pleasant but will contain numerous passages of striking humor.
Since first-class minds never believe anything very strongly until
they've experienced it, its value will be purely relative . . . all
people over thirty will refer to it as "depressing."

This prelude belongs to the story of a young man who lived, as you and
I do, before the book.

The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of
adolescence to a mighty fan-fare of trumpets. Bryan played the star in
an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp behind the
retreating German lines, so luck triumphant or sentiment rampant
awarded him a row of medals and on his arrival in the States he was
told that he was second in importance only to General Pershing and
Sergeant York. This was a lot of fun. The governor of his State, a
stray congressman, and a citizens' committee gave him enormous smiles
and "By God, Sirs" on the dock at Hoboken; there were newspaper
reporters and photographers who said "would you mind" and "if you
could just"; and back in his home town there were old ladies, the rims
of whose eyes grew red as they talked to him, and girls who hadn't
remembered him so well since his father's business went blah! in
nineteen-twelve.

But when the shouting died he realized that for a month he had been
the house guest of the mayor, that he and only fourteen dollars in the
world and that "the name that will live forever in the annals and
legends of this State" was already living there very quietly and
obscurely.

One morning he lay late in bed and just outside his door he heard the
up-stairs maid talking to the cook. The up-stairs maid said that Mrs.
Hawkins, the mayor's wife, had been trying for a week to hint
Dalyrimple out of the house. He left at eleven o'clock in intolerable
confusion, asking that his trunk be sent to Mrs. Beebe's boarding-
house.

Dalyrimple was twenty-three and he had never worked. His father had
given him two years at the State University and passed away about the
time of his son's nine-day romp, leaving behind him some mid-Victorian
furniture and a thin packet of folded paper that turned out to be
grocery bills. Young Dalyrimple had very keen gray eyes, a mind that
delighted the army psychological examiners, a trick of having read it
-- whatever it was -- some time before, and a cool hand in a hot
situation. But these things did not save him a final, unresigned sigh
when he realized that he had to go to work -- right away.

It was early afternoon when he walked into the office of Theron G.
Macy, who owned the largest wholesale grocery house in town. Plump,
prosperous, wearing a pleasant but quite unhumorous smile, Theron G.
Macy greeted him warmly.

"Well -- how do, Bryan? What's on your mind?"

To Dalyrimple, straining with his admission, his own words, when they
came, sounded like an Arab beggar's whine for alms.

"Why -- this question of a job." ("This question of a job" seemed
somehow more clothed than just "a job.")

"A job?" An almost imperceptible breeze blew across Mr. Macy's
expression.

"You see, Mr. Macy," continued Dalyrimple, "I feel I'm wasting time. I
want to get started at something. I had several chances about a month
ago but they all seem to have -- gone--"

"Let's see," interrupted Mr. Macy. "What were they?"

"Well, just at the first the governor said something about a vacancy
on his staff. I was sort of counting on that for a while, but I hear
he's given it to Allen Gregg, you know, son of G. P. Gregg. He sort of
forgot what he said to me -- just talking, I guess."

"You ought to push those things."

"Then there was that engineering expedition, but they decided they'd
have to have a man who knew hydraulics, so they couldn't use me unless
I paid my own way."

"You had just a year at the university?"

"Two. But I didn't take any science or mathematics. Well, the day the
battalion paraded, Mr. Peter Jordan said something about a vacancy in
his store. I went around there to-day and I found he meant a sort of
floor-walker -- and then you said something one day" -- he paused and
waited for the older man to take him up, but noting only a minute
wince continued--"about a position, so I thought I'd come and see
you."

"There was a position," confessed Mr. Macy reluctantly, "but since
then we've filled it." He cleared his throat again. "You've waited
quite a while."

"Yes, I suppose I did. Everybody told me there was no hurry -- and I'd
had these various offers."

Mr. Macy delivered a paragraph on present-day opportunities which
Dalyrimple's mind completely skipped."

"Have you had any business experience?"

"I worked on a ranch two summers as a rider."

"Oh, well," Mr. Macy disparaged this neatly, and then continued: "What
do you think you're worth?"

"I don't know."

"Well, Bryan, I tell you, I'm willing to strain a point and give you a
chance."

Dalyrimple nodded.

"Your salary won't be much. You'll start by learning the stock. Then
you'll come in the office for a while. Then you'll go on the road.
When could you begin? "

"How about to-morrow?"

"All right. Report to Mr. Hanson in the stock-room. He'1l start you
off."

He continued to regard Dalyrimple steadily until the latter, realizing
that the interview was over, rose awkwardly.

"Well, Mr. Macy, I'm certainly much obliged."

"That's all right. Glad to help you, Bryan."

After an irresolute moment, Dalyrimple found himself in the hall. His
forehead was covered with perspiration, and the room had not been hot.

"Why the devil did I thank the son of a gun?" he muttered.

III

Next morning Mr. Hanson informed him coldly of the necessity of
punching the time-clock at seven every morning, and delivered him for
instruction into the hands of a fellow worker, one Charley Moore.

Charley was twenty-six, with that faint musk of weakness hanging about
him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took no
psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into indulgence
and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life, and was to drift
out. He was pale and his clothes stank of smoke; he enjoyed burlesque
shows, billiards, and Robert Service, and was always looking back upon
his last intrigue or forward to his next one. In his youth his taste
had run to loud ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his
vitality, and was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and
indeterminate gray collars. Charley was listlessly struggling that
losing struggle against mental, moral, and physical anæmia that takes
place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes.

The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal cartons and
carefully went over the limitations of the Theron G. Macy Company.

"It's a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me. I'm
quittin' in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!"

The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month. They
do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit around
comparing their last job with the present one, to the infinite
disparagement of the latter.

"What do you get?" asked Dalyrimple curiously.

"Me? I get sixty." This rather defiantly.

"Did you start at sixty?"

"Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he'd put me on the road
after I learned the stock. That's what he tells 'em all."

"How long've you been here?" asked Dalyrimple with a sinking
sensation.

"Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots."

Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective as he
resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him almost
immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule was a thorn in
his side. He was accustomed to his three or four cigarettes in a
morning, and after three days without it he followed Charley Moore by
a circuitous route up a flight of back stairs to a little balcony
where they indulged in peace. But this was not for long. One day in
his second week the detective met him in a nook of the stairs, on his
descent, and told him sternly that next time he'd be reported to Mr.
Macy. Dalyrimple felt like an errant schoolboy.

Unpleasant facts came to his knowledge. There were "cave-dwellers" in
the basement who had worked there for ten or fifteen years at sixty
dollars a month, rolling barrels and carrying boxes through damp,
cement-walled corridors, lost in that echoing half-darkness between
seven and five-thirty and, like himself, compelled several times a
month to work until nine at night.

At the end of a month he stood in line and received forty dollars. He
pawned a cigarette-case and a pair of field-glasses and managed to
live -- to eat, sleep, and smoke. It was, however, a narrow scrape; as
the ways and means of economy were a closed book to him and the second
month brought no increase, he voiced his alarm.

"If you've got a drag with old Macy, maybe he'll raise you," was
Charley's disheartening reply. "But he didn't raise me till I'd been
here nearly two years."

"I've got to live," said Dalyrimple simply. "I could get more pay as a
laborer on the railroad but, Golly, I want to feel I'm where there's a
chance to get ahead."

Charles shook his head sceptically and Mr. Macy's answer next day was
equally unsatisfactory.

Dalyrimple had gone to the office just before closing time.

"Mr. Macy, I'd like to speak to you."

"Why -- yes." The unhumorous smile appeared. The voice vas faintly
resentful.

"I want to speak to you in regard to more salary."

Mr. Macy nodded.

"Well," he said doubtfully, "I don't know exactly what you're doing.
I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."

He knew exactly what Dalyrimple was doing, and Dalyrimple knew he
knew.

"I'm in the stock-room -- and, sir, while I'm here I'd like to ask you
how much longer I'll have to stay there."

"Why -- I'm not sure exactly. Of course it takes some time to learn
the stock."

"You told me two months when I started."

"Yes. Well, I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."

Dalyrimple paused irresolute.

"Thank you, sir."

Two days later he again appeared in the office with the result of a
count that had been asked for by Mr. Hesse, the bookkeeper. Mr. Hesse
was engaged and Dalyrimple, waiting, began idly fingering in a ledger
on the stenographer's desk.

Half unconsciously he turned a page -- he caught sight of his name --
it was a salary list:

Dalyrimple
Demming
Donahoe
Everett
His eyes stopped--

Everett.........................$60

So Tom Everett, Macy's weak-chinned nephew, had started at sixty --
and in three weeks he had been out of the packing-room and into the
office.

So that was it! He was to sit and see man after man pushed over him:
sons, cousins, sons of friends, irrespective of their capabilities,
while he was cast for a pawn, with "going on the road" dangled before
his eyes -- put off with the stock remark: I'll see; I'll look into
it." At forty, perhaps, he would be a bookkeeper like old Hesse,
tired, listless Hesse with a dull routine for his stint and a dull
background of boarding-house conversation.

This was a moment when a genii should have pressed into his hand the
book for disillusioned young men. But the book has not been written.

A great protest swelling into revolt surged up in him. Ideas half
forgotten, chaoticly perceived and assimilated, filled his mind. Get
on -- that was the rule of life -- and that was all. How he did it,
didn't matter -- but to be Hesse or Charley Moore.

"I won't!" he cried aloud.

The bookkeeper and the stenographers looked up in surprise.

"What?"

For a second Dalyrimple stared -- then walked up to the desk.

"Here's that data," he said brusquely. "I can't wait any longer."

Mr. Hesse's face expressed surprise.

It didn't matter what he did -- just so he got out of this rut. In a
dream he stepped from the elevator into the stock-room, and walking to
an unused aisle, sat down on a box, covering his face with his hands.

His brain was whirring with the frightful jar of discovering a
platitude for himself.

"I've got to get out of this," he said aloud and then repeated, "I've
got to get out" -- and he didn't mean only out of Macy's wholesale
house.

When he left at five-thirty it was pouring rain, but he struck off in
the opposite direction from his boarding-house, feeling, in the first
cool moisture that oozed soggily through his old suit, an odd
exultation and freshness. He wanted a world that was like walking
through rain, even though he could not see far ahead of him, but fate
had put him in the world of Mr. Macy's lead storerooms and corridors.
At first merely the overwhelming need of change took him, then half-
plans began to formulate in his imagination.

"I'll go East -- to a big city -- meet people -- bigger people --
people who'll help me. Interesting work somewhere. My God, there must
be."

With sickening truth it occurred to him that his facility for meeting
people was limited. Of all places it was here in his own town that he
should be known, was known -- famous -- before the water of oblivion
had rolled over him.

You had to cut corners, that was all. Pull -- relationship -- wealthy
marriages --

For several miles the continued reiteration of this preoccupied him
and then he perceived that the rain had become thicker and more opaque
in the heavy gray of twilight and that the houses were falling away.
The district of full blocks, then of big houses, then of scattering
little ones, passed and great sweeps of misty country opened out on
both sides. It was hard walking here. The sidewalk had given place to
a dirt road, streaked with furious brown rivulets that splashed and
squashed around his shoes.

Cutting corners -- the words began to fall apart, forming curious
phrasings -- little illuminated pieces of themselves. They resolved
into sentences, each of which had a strangely familiar ring.

Cutting corners meant rejecting the old childhood principles that
success came from faithfulness to duty, that evil was necessarily
punished or virtue necessarily rewarded -- that honest poverty was
happier than corrupt riches.

It meant being hard.

This phrase appealed to him and he repeated it over and over. It had
to do somehow with Mr. Macy and Charley Moore -- the attitudes, the
methods of each of them.

He stopped and felt his clothes. He was drenched to the skin. He
looked about him and, selecting a place in the fence where a tree
sheltered it, perched himself there.

In my credulous years -- he thought -- they told me that evil was a
sort of dirty hue, just as definite as a soiled collar, but it seems
to me that evil is only a manner of hard luck, or heredity-and-
environment, or "being found out." It hides in the vacillations of
dubs like Charley Moore as certainly as it does in the intolerance of
Macy, and if it ever gets much more tangible it becomes merely an
arbitrary label to paste on the unpleasant things in other people's
lives.

In fact -- he concluded -- it isn't worth worrying over what's evil
and what isn't. Good and evil aren't any standard to me -- and they
can be a devil of a bad hindrance when I want something. When I want
something bad enough, common sense tells me to go and take it -- and
not get caught.

And then suddenly Dalyrimple knew what he wanted first. He wanted
fifteen dollars to pay his overdue board bill.

With a furious energy he jumped from the fence, whipped off his coat,
and from its black lining cut with his knife a piece about five inches
square. He made two holes near its edge and then fixed it on his face,
pulling his hat down to hold it in place. It flapped grotesquely and
then dampened and clung clung to his forehead and cheeks.

Now . . . The twilight had merged to dripping dusk . . . black as
pitch. He began to walk quickly back toward town, not waiting to
remove the mask but watching the road with difficulty through the
jagged eye-holes. He was not conscious of any nervousness . . . the
only tension was caused by a desire to do the thing as soon as
possible.

He reached the first sidewalk, continued on until he saw a hedge far
from any lamp-post, and turned in behind it. Within a minute he heard
several series of footsteps -- he waited -- it was a woman and he held
his breath until she passed . . . and then a man, a laborer. The next
passer, he felt, would be what he wanted . . . the laborer's footfalls
died far up the drenched street . . . other steps grew nears grew
suddenly louder.

Dalyrimple braced himself.

"Put up your hands!"

The man stopped, uttered an absurd little grunt, and thrust pudgy arms
skyward.

Dalyrimple went through the waistcoat.

"Now, you shrimp," he said, setting his hand suggestively to his own
hip pocket, "you run, and stamp -- loud! If I hear your feet stop I'll
put a shot after you!"

Then he stood there in sudden uncontrollable laughter as audibly
frightened footsteps scurried away into the night.

After a moment he thrust the roll of bills into his pocket, snatched
of his mask, and running quickly across the street, darted down an
alley.

Yet, however Dalyrimple justified himself intellectually, he had many
bad moments in the weeks immediately following his decision. The
tremendous pressure of sentiment and inherited ambition kept raising
riot with his attitude. He felt morally lonely.

The noon after his first venture he ate in a little lunch-room with
Charley Moore and, watching him unspread the paper, waited for a
remark about the hold-up of the day before. But either the hold-up was
not mentioned or Charley wasn't interested. He turned listlessly to
the sporting sheet, read Doctor Crane's crop of seasoned bromides,
took in an editorial on ambition with his mouth slightly ajar, and
then skipped to Mutt and Jeff.

Poor Charley -- with his faint aura of evil and his mind that refused
to focus, playing a lifeless solitaire with cast-off mischief.

Yet Charley belonged on the other side of the fence. In him could be
stirred up all the flamings and denunciations of righteousness; he
would weep at a stage heroine's lost virtue, he could become lofty and
contemptuous at the idea of dishonor.

On my side, thought Dalyrimple, there aren't any resting-places; a man
who's a strong criminal is after the weak criminals as well, so it's
all guerilla warfare over here.

What will it all do to me? he thoughts with a persistent weariness.
Will it take tike color out of life with the honor? Will it scatter my
courage and dull my mind? -- despiritualize me completely -- does it
mean eventual barrenness, eventual remorse, failure?

With a great surge of anger, he would fling his mind upon the barrier
-- and stand there with the flashing bayonet of his pride. Other men
who broke the laws of justice and charity lied to all the world. He at
any rate would not lie to himself. He was more than Byronic now: not
the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the philosophical rebel, Faust; but
a new psychological rebel of his own century -- defying the
sentimental a priori forms of his own mind.

Happiness was what he wanted -- a slowly rising scale of
gratifications of the normal appetites -- and he had a strong
conviction that the materials, if not the inspiration of happiness,
could be bought with money.

The night came that drew him out upon his second venture, and as he
walked the dark street he felt in himself a great resemblance to a cat
-- a certain supple, swinging litheness. His muscles were rippling
smoothly and sleekly under his spare, healthy flesh -- he had an
absurd desire to bound along the street, to run dodging among trees,
to tarn "cart-wheels" over soft grass.

It was not crisp, but in the air lay a faint suggestion of acerbity,
inspirational rather than chilling.

"The moon is down -- I have not heard the clock!"

He laughed in delight at the line which an early memory had endowed
with a hushed awesome beauty.

He passed a man and then another a quarter of mile afterward.

He was on Philmore Street now and it was very dark. He blessed the
city council for not having put in new lamp-posts as a recent budget
had recommended. Here was the red-brick Sterner residence which marked
the beginning of the avenue; here was the Jordon house, the
Eisenhaurs', the Dents', the Markhams', the Frasers'; the Hawkins',
where he had been a guest; the Willoughbys', the Everett's, colonial
and ornate; the little cottage where lived the Watts old maids between
the imposing fronts of the Macys' and the Krupstadts'; the Craigs--

Ah . . . there! He paused, wavered violently -- far up the street was
a blot, a man walking, possibly a policeman. After an eternal second
he found himself following the vague, ragged shadow of a lamp-post
across a lawn, running bent very low. Then he was standing tense,
without breath or need of it, in the shadow of his limestone prey.

Interminably he listened -- a mile off a cat howled, a hundred yards
away another took up the hymn in a demoniacal snarl, and he felt his
heart dip and swoop, acting as shock-absorber for his mind. There were
other sounds; the faintest fragment of song far away; strident,
gossiping laughter from a back porch diagonally across the alley; and
crickets, crickets singing in the patched, patterned, moonlit grass of
the yard. Within the house there seemed to lie an ominous silence. He
was glad he did not know who lived here.

His slight shiver hardened to steel; the steel softened and his nerves
became pliable as leather; gripping his hands he gratefully found them
supple, and taking out knife and pliers he went to work on the screen.

So sure was he that he was unobserved that, from the dining-room where
in a minute he found himself, he leaned out and carefully pulled the
screen up into position, balancing it so it would neither fall by
chance nor be a serious obstacle to a sudden exit.

Then he put the open knife in his coat pocket, took out his pocket-
flash, and tiptoed around the room.

There was nothing here he could use -- the dining-room had never been
included in his plans for the town was too small to permit disposing
of silver.

As a matter of fact his plans were of the vaguest. He had found that
with a mind like his, lucrative in intelligence, intuition, and
lightning decision, it was best to have but the skeleton of a
campaign. The machine-gun episode had taught him that. And he was
afraid that a method preconceived would give him two points of view in
a crisis -- and two points of view meant wavering.

He stumbled slightly on a chair, held his breath, listened, went on,
found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh stair
creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was counting them
automatically. At the third creak he paused again for over a minute—
and in that minute he felt more alone than he had ever felt before.
Between the lines on patrol, even when alone, he had had behind him
the moral support of half a billion people; now he was alone, pitted
against that same moral pressure -- a bandit. He had never felt this
fear, yet he had never felt this exultation.

The stairs came to an end, a doorway approached; he went in and
listened to regular breathing. His feet were economical of steps and
his body swayed sometimes at stretching as he felt over the bureau,
pocketing all articles which held promise -- he could not have
enumerated them ten seconds afterward. He felt on a chair for possible
trousers, found soft garments, women's lingerie. The corners of his
mouth smiled mechanically.

Another room . . . the same breathing, enlivened by one ghastly snort
that sent his heart again on its tour of his breast. Round object --
watch; chain; roll of bills; stick-pins; two rings -- he remembered
that he had got rings from the other bureau. He started out winced as
a faint glow flashed in front of him, facing him. God! -- it was the
glow of his own wrist-watch on his outstretched arm.

Down the stairs. He skipped two crumbing steps but found another. He
was all right now, practically safe; as he neared the bottom he felt a
slight boredom. He reached the dining-room -- considered the silver --
again decided against it.

Back in his room at the boarding-house he examined the additions to
his personal property:

Sixty-five dollars in bills.

A platinum ring with three medium diamonds, worth, probably, about
seven hundred dollars. Diamonds were going up.

A cheap gold-plated ring with the initials O. S. and the date inside
-- '03 -- probably a class-ring from school. Worth a few dollars.
Unsalable.

A red-cloth case containing a set of false teeth.

A silver watch.

A gold chain worth more than the watch.

An empty ring-box.

A little ivory Chinese god -- probably a desk ornament.

A dollar and sixty-two cents an small change.

He put the money under his pillow and the other things in the toe of
an infantry boot, stuffing a stocking in on top of them. Then for two
hours his mind raced like a high-power engine here and there through
his life, past and future, through fear and laughter. With a vague,
inopportune wish that he were married, he fell into a deep sleep about
half past five.

Though the newspaper account of the burglary failed to mention the
false teeth, they worried him considerably. The picture of a human
waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain, of a soft,
toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping voice calling the
police station, of weary, dispirited visits to the dentist, roused a
great fatherly pity in him.

Trying to ascertain whether they belonged to a man or a woman, he took
them carefully out of the case and held them up near his mouth. He
moved his own jaws experimentally; he measured with his fingers; but
he failed to decide: they might belong either to a large-mouthed woman
or a small-mouthed man.

On a warm impulse he wrapped them in brown paper from the bottom of
his army trunk, and printed FALSE TEETH on the package in clumsy
pencil letters. Then, the next night, he walked down Philmore Street,
and shied the package onto the lawn so that it would be near the door.
Next day the paper announced that the police had a clue—they knew that
the burglar was in town. However, they didn't mention what the clue
was.

VII

At the end of a month "Burglar Bill of the Silver District" was the
nurse-girl's standby for frightening children. Five burglaries were
attributed to him, but though Dalyrimple had only committed three, he
considered that majority had it and appropriated the title to himself.
He had once been seen -- "a large bloated creature with the meanest
face you ever laid eyes on." Mrs. Henry Coleman, awaking at two
o'clock at the beam of an electric torch flashed in her eye, could not
have been expected to recognize Bryan Dalyrimple at whom she had waved
flags last Fourth of July, and whom she had described as "not at all
the daredevil type, do you think?"

When Dalyrimple kept his imagination at white heat he managed to
glorify his own attitude, his emancipation from petty scruples and
remorses -- but let him once allow his thought to rove unarmored,
great unexpected horrors and depressions would overtake him. Then for
reassurance he had to go back to think out the whole thing over again.
He found that it was on the whole better to give up considering
himself as a rebel. It was more consoling to think of every one else
as a fool.

His attitude toward Mr. Macy underwent a change. He no longer felt a
dim animosity and inferiority in his presence. As his fourth month in
the store ended he found himself regarding his employer in a manner
that was almost fraternal. He had a vague but very assured conviction
that Mr. Macy's innermost soul would have abetted and approved. He no
longer worried about his future. He had the intention of accumulating
several thousand dollars and then clearing out -- going east, back to
France, down to South America. Half a dozen times in the last two
months he hid been about to stop work, but a fear of attracting
attention to his being in funds prevented him. So he worked on, no
longer in listlessness, but with contemptuous amusement.

VIII

Then with astounding suddenness something happened that changed his
plans and put an end to his burglaries.

Mr. Macy sent for him one afternoon and with a great show of jovial
mystery asked him if he had an engagement that night. If he hadn't,
would he please call on Mr. Alfred J. Fraser at eight o'clock.
Dalyrimple's wonder was mingled with uncertainty. He debated with
himself whether it were not his cue to take the first train out of
town. But an hour's consideration decided him that his fears were
unfounded and at eight o'clock he arrived at the big Fraser house in
Philmore Avenue.

Mr. Fraser was commonly supposed to be the biggest political influence
in the city. His brother was Senator Fraser, his son-in-law was
Congressman Demming, and his influence, though not wielded in such a
way as to make him an objectionable boss, was strong nevertheless.

He had a great, huge face, deep-set eyes, and a barn-door of an upper
lip, the melange approaching a worthy climax if a long professional
jaw.

During his conversation with Dalyrimple his expression kept starting
toward a smile, reached a cheerful optimism, and then receded back to
imperturbability.

"How do you do, sir?" he laid, holding out his hand. "Sit down. I
suppose you're wondering why I wanted you. Sit down."

Dalyrimple sat down.

"Mr. Dalyrimple, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-three."

"You're young. But that doesn't mean you're foolish. Mr. Dalyrimple,
what I've got to say won't take long. I'm going to make you a
proposition. To begin at the beginning, I've been watching you ever
since last Fourth of July when you made that speech in response to the
loving-cup."

Dalyrimple murmured disparagingly, but Fraser waved him to silence.

"It was a speech I've remembered. It was a brainy speech, straight
from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that crowd. I know. I've
watched crowds for years." He cleared his throat as if tempted to
digress on his knowledge of crowds -- then continued. "But, Mr.
Dalyrimple, I've seen too many young men who promised brilliantly go
to pieces, fail through want of steadiness, too many high-power ideas,
and not enough willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what
you'd do. I wanted to see if you'd go to work, and if you'd stick to
what you started."

Dalyrimple felt a glow settle over him.

"So," continued Fraser, "when Theron Macy told me you'd started down
at his place, I kept watching you, and I followed your record through
him. The first month I was afraid for awhile. He told me you were
getting restless, too good for your job, hinting around for a raise--"

Dalyrimple started.

"--But he said after that you evidently made up your mind to shut up
and stick to it. That's the stuff I like in a young man! That's the
stuff that wins out. And don't think I don't understand. I know how
much harder it was for you after all that silly flattery a lot of old
women had been giving you. I know what a fight it must have been--"

Dalyrimple's face was burning brightly. It felt young and strangely
ingenuous.

"Dalyrimple, you've got brains and you've got the stuff in you -- and
that's what I want. I'm going to put you into the State Senate."

"The what?"

"The State Senate. We want a young man who has got brains, but is
solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don't stop
there. We're up against it here, Dalyrimple. We've got to get some
young men into politics -- you know the old blood that's been running
on the party ticket year in and year out."

Dalyrimple licked his lips.

"You'll run me for the State Senate?"

"I'll put you in the State Senate."

Mr. Fraser's expression had now reached the point nearest a smile and
Dalyrimple in a happy frivolity felt himself urging it mentally on --
but it stopped, locked, and slid from him. The barn-door and the jaw
were separated by a line strait as a nail. Dalyrimple remembered with
an effort that it was a mouth, and talked to it.

"But I'm through," he said. "My notoriety's dead. People are fed up
with me."

"Those things," answered Mr. Fraser, "are mechanical. Linotype is a
resuscitator of reputations. Wait till you see the Herald, beginning
next week -- that is if you're with us -- that is," and his voice
hardened slightly, "if you haven't got too many ideas yourself about
how things ought to be run."

"No," said Dalyrimple, looking him frankly in the eye. "You'll have to
give me a lot of advice at first."

"Very well. I'll take care of your reputation then. Just keep yourself
on the right side of the fence."

Dalyrimple started at this repetition of a phrase he had thought of so
much lately. There was a sudden ring at the door-bell.

"That's Macy now," observed Fraser, rising. "I'll go let him in. The
servants have gone to bed."

He left Dalyrimple there in a dream. The world was opening up suddenly
-- The State Senate, the United States Senate -- so life was this
after all -- cutting corners -- common sense, that was the rule. No
more foolish risks now unless necessity called -- but it was being
hard that counted -- Never to let remorse or self-reproach lose him a
night's sleep -- let his life be a sword of courage -- there was no
payment -- all that was drivel -- drivel.

He sprang to his feet with clinched hands in a sort of triumph.

"Well, Bryan," said Mr. Macy stepping through the portières.

The two older men smiled their half-smiles at him.

"Well Bryan," said Mr. Macy again.

Dalyrimple smiled also.

"How do, Mr. Macy?"

He wondered if some telepathy between them had made this new
appreciation possible -- some invisible realization. . . .

Mr. Macy held out his hand.

"I'm glad we're to be associated in this scheme -- I've been for you
all along -- especially lately. I'm glad we're to be on the same side
of the fence."

"I want to thank you, sir," said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a
whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.