The Golden Rule Dollivers (short story)

by Margaret Cameron

 

The Golden Rule Dollivers

BY MARGARET CAMERON

IF Galen Corbin had not chosen the morning of June 16th for the interviews concerning the purchase of a large amount of draught gear, the Dollivers would not have been out motoring at all on the 15th, and then the thing could not have happened.

The Dollivers had come from the West, full of energy and a joyous optimism that six months' residence in New York had only strengthened, as will presently be seen; and things had gone so well with them in a business way that Page felt justified in buying the long-coveted automobile, which he was keeping as a surprise for Marjorie on the second anniversary of their marriage, the sixteenth of June. Moreover, he had planned to spend the whole day motoring with her, and to that end had secretly prepared himself to drive the car.

When he found, therefore, on reaching his office on the fifteenth, that he must devote a part of the following day to business, he decided rather to hasten than to defer the moment of presentation, and immediately called up his wife by telephone.

“How would you like to play with me this afternoon?” he began.

“Instead of to-morrow?” she instantly questioned, apprehension in her tone.

“Instead of to-morrow morning,” he explained. “Wouldn't you rather have two afternoons than a whole day?”

“Why?”

“Well,” he temporized, diplomatically, “you won't get so tired, for one thing. Besides, it may rain to-morrow. But it's fine to-day, and I'm not very busy, so if it suits you, I'll come home early and freshen up a bit. Then we'll wander where our fancy listeth, and get luncheon—and perhaps dinner—on the way. How does that strike you?”

“Joyfully, of course. Especially as the bird in the bush may flit before we get to it.”

“No, it won't,” he promised, laughing. “We'll bag that one, too. We'll surely have two long afternoons together.”

Learning that she had shopping to do down-town, he suggested, with an amused appreciation of contrasts, that they should meet at noon at a hotel in Forty-second Street, and thence take a surface car to their apartment on the upper west side. Subsequently he called up the garage and directed that the new automobile be sent to his door at one o'clock, after which he gave all his energies to the business of the day.

Promptly at the appointed hour he met Marjorie at their rendezvous, and they strolled to the corner, where they stood in the sun awaiting a Broadway ear, and watching the ceaseless procession of equipages, while she told him of her morning's shopping. Presently there was a pause. Then said she, sighing:

“Why do we always have to wait and wait for a street-car, if we happen to want one, when at home we can hardly hear ourselves think for the clatter of their continual passing?”

“Why in thunder don't we own a car?” grumbled her husband, voicing with keen relish an oft-repeated lament. “Who are all these motoring people, that they should roll by in gaudy glory, puffing smoke in our faces, while we sizzle on a curb waiting for a contemptible street-car? Insolent, vulgar, blatant ostentation, I call it!”

Marjorie laughed.

“Oh, well, a street-car isn't so bad if it has open sides,” she defended. “At least it's better than the Subway on a day like this.”

“But who wants to run on rails, anyhow?” growled Dolliver, with enjoyment. “You're a poor-spirited, submissive sort of a person, after all, Marjorie, content to poke along always on the same track, over a route somebody else has selected for you.”

One of the joys of having a Car would be to share it with other People

“I'm a woman,” she submitted, dimpling.

“Why don't you say you're a married woman, and be done with it?”

“That's so obvious,” was the prompt retort. “Why doesn't that car come? I'm cooking!”

“And look at that young reprobate rattling around all by himself in a seven-passenger whale!”

“He looked right at us, too,” plaintively said Marjorie. “Now wouldn't you think, when he saw what nice people we are—and anybody can see at a glance that we are nice people—and how hot and tired we are—wouldn't you think he'd stop and say, 'If you are going my way, won't you let me take you home?' If we did own a car, Page, we'd do that sometimes, wouldn't we?”

“I wonder if we would?” Dolliver grinned quizzically.

“Of course we would! One of the joys of having a car would be to share it with other people; and it's so selfish to limit one's sharing to the people one happens to know socially, who can generally be relied upon to make some sort of return in kind. It would be the essence of gladness to give pleasure just for pleasure's sake. Oh, we wouldn't forget all the poor, tired, wistful people on the sidewalks just because we happened to own a car—you know we wouldn't!”

“I hope we wouldn't,” he amended, “but, of course, there's the chance that we might be like everybody else when the time came.”

“Think of the patient, tired old ladies, waiting on corners like this for crowded street-cars in which nobody would give them a seat, whom we could pick up and whisk home in comfort,” continued Marjorie, as enthusiastically as if she were enlarging upon this theme for the first time.

“They'd probably suspect you of dark designs, and refuse to get into the car at all.”

“And the worn-out mothers, with little, hot children dragging at their skirts, whom we'd whirl through the Park and out the Drive before we took them home.”

“And find the cushions all spotted with sticky finger-marks afterward,” teased Dolliver.

“And the nice young people like us, who would enjoy it the more because they'd planned to do that very thing themselves if they ever had a car of their own.”

“And who would probably call upon us the next day, or invite us to an Italian table d'hôte, sixty-five cents with wine, so we'd take them again,” cynically commented her husband; but there was a twinkle in his eye, and his wife shook her head, sagely smiling.

“That's all very well, but you know you'd be just as keen as I would to do things like that sometimes, if we owned a car. You've said so lots of times.”

“So I have, and, by jiminy! we'll do some of them sometime, too—when we own an automobile. Meanwhile here comes the belated common carrier to which, at present, we are condemned.”

Perhaps this conversation, enkindling as it was, had almost as much to do with what happened later as had the matter of the draught gear, already mentioned, toward which, when they had found seats in the car, Marjorie unconsciously turned the talk.

“By the way,” said she, “who's my rival?”

“Rival?”

“Who wants you to-morrow?”

“Well—there is one little matter of business,” he admitted.

“Oh?” she murmured, dryly. “You surprise me.”

“Really, dear, it won't take long,” apologetically, “but I must see one man in the morning.”

It stood for Country in the Midst Of Town

There they had a dainty, deliberate Luncheon

“What man?”

“Galen Corbin.”

“Who's he?”

“He's the President of the D. & G. L.”

“And it's really necessary—to-morrow? He couldn't wait?”

“Wait! Corbin? Great Scott!”

“Well—couldn't he?”

“I dare say he could, but far be it from me to make the suggestion.”

“Why?”

“Because he's Galen Corbin, President of the Dixie and Great Lakes Railroad, who is about to place a large order for draught gear for his road, and I'm merely the shackled slave of a concern that is keen to land just as much of that order as we can persuade him to give us. I'm not taking any liberties with him just now.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Heretofore Kleinert Brothers have had the lion's share of his business—I told you about it, don't you remember?—and for six months I've been laying my wires to get some of it away from them. Now that he's ready to place the order, it's up to Corbin to decide which of us gets it, and it's up to me to convince him that ours is the best. He's been out of town for several weeks, and I didn't know he was back until I was notified this morning that he would see me at eleven to-morrow. You see, don't you, what that means?”

“Y-yes, but—we'll never have but one second anniversary, dear. Couldn't somebody else attend to it for you this once?”

“Oh yes, somebody else could. Somebody else could also get the credit for swinging it, if it came out right. And if we lost it, I should always feel that we might have landed it if I had stayed on the job. You see, dear, it will be a big thing for me if I get this, under the circumstances. I'm pretty young to be holding down this job, anyway, and the Kleinerts are hard after us, so it will be a feather in my cap if I win—and I think I shall. I have some friends in Corbin's office who will do what they can, but in the end it depends entirely upon Corbin himself, and by all accounts he's a queer duck.”

“What is he like? Do you know him?”

“I've never seen him. Men who have say that he's a crusty beggar, sharp as needles and hard as nails. But since I've been handling this thing from the start, I don't want to turn it over to somebody else just at the crucial moment. You see that, don't you?”

“Perfectly—now.”

“And you won't mind my giving a couple of hours to it in the morning?”

“It would be sweetly helpful of me to object to what is so manifestly the best thing for you, wouldn't it?” she evaded.

“You're one treasure,” he remarked, knowing how keen her disappointment really was. “We'll make it up to ourselves, somehow.”

“Anyway, we have to-day,” she philosophized, and remembering what the afternoon held for them of joy, he smiled.

Nor was he disappointed when, at on o'clock, he led her out to the little five-passenger car which at the moment represented to them the fulfilment of their dearest dream. It stood for country in the midst of town, and rest in the heart of endeavor. It stood for a closer companionship with each other, and for a wider, freer, more helpful hospitality than their small apartment enabled them to exercise. And when her delight bubbled over her lips and shone in her eyes, he felt sure for the first time in weeks that he had been justified in postponing her pleasure to make this anniversary time more perfect, while himself reveling in all the joys of anticipation.

They discussed briefly the advisability of inviting friends to join them in this first drive in the new car, but decided that these two afternoons were peculiarly their own. So they set off, very happily, for a certain cool, shadowy, wayside inn which had long attracted them, and there they had a dainty, deliberate luncheon, purposely lingering over each course that they might savor life's new flavor to the full. That was no hackney car awaiting them out under the trees, hired by the hour, and demanding thrift and expedition in its use, but their very own, and in this consciousness lay a delicious sense of space and opulence and leisure, with which they delicately toyed.

It was much later, about four o'clock, when human vitality is ebbing and the burden of the day lies heavy, that they saw ahead of them an old man plodding along on foot in the heat and dust of the country road. His shoulders were bent, his hair was gray, and as they passed him he paused to wipe the perspiration from his face.

“Oh, Page,” cried Marjorie, “did you see that poor old man? Let's pick him up, and take him wherever he's going!”

“What for?” asked her husband, but he slowed up, obediently.

“Because he's old and tired and hot. Let's begin sharing our good fortune this very first day! Do go back and get him!”

“All right,” he agreed, smiling into her glowing eyes. “Will you ask him, or shall I?”

“Oh, you,” said she. “You, of course.”

So he turned the car around, and they trundled back to the plodding figure.

“Good afternoon,” said Dolliver. The other man shot a sharp glance at him, and nodded curtly. “It's a hot day for walking. Won't you let us give you a lift?”

'I won't trouble you—thanks,” was the rather gruff reply.

“No trouble at all,” declared the younger man. “We're going your way, and—as you see—we have plenty of room. We'll be glad to set you down wherever you like.”

“I'm not going far,” returned the other, after a second quick scrutiny. “I'll walk.”

“Oh, but it's such a hot, dusty stretch of road!” softly interpolated Marjorie, leaning a little forward, and smiling into the grim, unresponsive face. “I can't bear to think of anybody walking it when we have this great empty car. Do come! Won't you?”

“Thank you.” He took off his hat—somewhat grudgingly, it seemed—and they saw how the sparse, grizzled hair lay wet upon his brow. “You are very kind. But I don't like to accept favors.”

“Won't you let us give you a Lift?

Dolliver stared for a moment, on the brink of indignation, and then laughed a little. The man wore wrinkled, baggy clothes of a dingy gray, his linen was limp and soiled and his shoes trodden out of shape, and it was not difficult to trace a direct connection between his evident intelligence, the apparent adversity of his worldly estate, and the uncompromising stiffness of his manner toward these prosperous young people who so unceremoniously thrust their better fortune upon him. Therefore, though Dolliver laughed, by there was a nice admixture of deference and fellowship in his manner as he replied:

“I assure you there's no suggestion of obligation about this—no strings whatever attached. You're on foot and we have an empty tonneau behind here, and we're going the same way. Therefore it's up to us to give you a lift. That's the rule of the road. At least, if it isn't, it ought to be. It's the rule of our road, anyhow,” he added, smiling at his wife.

“If that is true, how comes your tonneau empty?” A shrewd little twinkle appeared in the man's eyes. “There's never any lack of people willing to be carried free.”

“Well, you can see for yourself that some of our invitations go a-begging,” laughed Dolliver. “Perhaps we're selfish, and ask only the people whom we think we'd enjoy carrying on.”

“I see. Only the deserving poor,” said the man in the road, dryly. “Well, then I will accept your invitation, if it is still open.”

“Of course it's open!” heartily cried the younger man, as the other unfastened the door and stepped into the tonneau. “Now, where shall we take you?”

“Straight ahead, if you please, to the nearest trolley line. I think it's about a mile farther on. You see, my machine broke down a couple of miles back there, on a cross-road, and as my fool of a driver couldn't fix it up, I set out to walk to a trolley.” The Dollivers both looked back at him, and, observing the humorous wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, laughed light-heartedly, glad that their passenger was sufficiently at ease to jest.

“Isn't that the depraved tendency of every car?” asked Marjorie, quite as if he were in a position to know. “We are told that even the best behaved of them display a diabolical sagacity in choosing for their demonstrations the spot farthest removed from a town or a telephone.”

“That's what mine does,” said he. “Doesn't yours?”

“Well—we're not very well acquainted with ours yet,” confessed Marjorie. “It's new.”

“Then this notion of picking up pedestrians along the road and helping them on their way is new, too?” he asked. “It is not your habit, after all?”

“N-no, it isn't exactly a habit—yet. But it's going to be,” she quickly added, intuitively combating some vague, intangible change in him, some shadow of coming disappointment or suspicion. “We've had the idea a long time, but we're just beginning to put it in practice, because, you see, we've only just got the car.”

“I see. You mean you are beginning to-day? With me? You've never done a thing like this before?”'

“How could we, when we had no car? This is the first time we've had it out. And one has to begin somewhere,” she submitted, gently, wondering what there was in the situation to affront even his sensitive pride. “Somebody has to be the first to share it with us, you know.”

“That's true enough,” said he, and lapsed into silence. But although she did not detect him in it, she felt thereafter that whenever her glance was averted he watched her.

She made one or two further attempts at conversation, to which he replied in monosyllables, and presently they came to the trolley line.

“Here!” said the man in the tonneau. “This is what I want. I'll get out here.”

“We haven't anything particular to do,” pleasantly suggested Dolliver. “Can't we take you on to your destination?”

“No—thanks. I'll take the trolley here.” He stepped out and closed the door. “Much obliged.”

“Not at all. It's been a pleasure to us,” was the cordial response.

The old man nodded and seemed about to turn away. Then, as if realizing that his acknowledgment had been inadequate, he stepped again toward the car, and looked up into the face of the driver.

“I'm really very much obliged to you,” said he. “You saved me a long, hot walk.”

“That's all right,” Dolliver assured him. “Why shouldn't we offer you a seat when we had three empty? That's one of the things we have this machine for.”

“People of your disposition are rare.”

“Oh, I don't know,” deprecated the young man. “I think lots of people have the disposition, but they hesitate to show it, because it isn't quite according to Hoyle. Most people are conventional, you know, and seem afraid to make a few little rules for themselves.”

“The rule you are talking about was made long before either you or Hoyle were born,” said the man in the road, slowly. “I didn't know anybody remembered it now.”

“What's that, sir?”

“When I was a boy they called it 'The Golden Rule.'”

“Oh—well—no, I'm afraid it isn't anything like that, sir,” stammered Dolliver, flushed and embarrassed. “I'm afraid it's only that my wife and I have made a new game for ourselves. We've always wondered why some of the nice people who had automobiles didn't share them occasionally with some of the nice people who hadn't, quite regardless of whether they were acquainted socially or not, and we've always said that if ever we owned a car we'd do that. Well, now we have the car, you see. That's all. It's a game we're playing.”

“A game without stakes,” suggested the old man, with another of his strange, penetrating glances. “You gain nothing.”

“What can we gain—except pleasure?” asked Dolliver, simply.

“H'm! That's very interesting. I should like to know your name.”

“Dolliver. Page Dolliver.”

“Thank you. I'll not detain you any longer. I think I hear my car coming. Good afternoon.”

They watched the dingy, bent figure cross the tracks, and then looked with delight into each other's eyes.

“Wasn't that fun?” whispered Marjorie. “Oh, Page dear, wasn't that delicious? Poor, pitiful, proud old soul!”

“I wonder what he is?” mused Page, slowly starting the car. “The old boy certainly takes himself seriously, doesn't he? He wasn't going to accept anything—not even a lift.”

“He was trying to save his pride, poor dear! He thought we were offering him patronage—charity—and wasn't he stiff about it, though! And his pathetic little joke about his own car! Probably the poor old thing never rode in an automobile before in his life.”

“I suppose it's possible that he's merely eccentric,” considered Dolliver, “in which case he may have left a machine back there somewhere.”

“Page! He couldn't own a car! Did you notice his clothes?”

“I did. I also noticed his eye, and it was the eye of a man accustomed to command.”

“You saved me a long, hot Walk”

“Oh, his spirit is still high,” she conceded. “That's the beautiful part of him. Life may have baffled him, but he's never been wholly defeated. He still has his pride left.”

“Well, by George! he has plenty of that!”

“Now, why doesn't a man like that succeed?” pursued Marjorie, earnestly. “He's intelligent and at least fairly well educated; he doesn't look dissipated and he does look determined. Why should his old age be stripped and hard and poor?”

“Business sense is a queer thing, dearie,” said her husband, thoughtfully. “A man may be all that you mention and still not have it. That's probably the trouble with our old friend—though he looks as if he had it. Perhaps he's had money and lost it, or maybe he has so large a family he never got a start.”

“Did you notice his allusion to a 'game without stakes,' as if he still felt that it might involve an obligation? And I could have cried when he spoke of the Golden Rule! Poor, disappointed, disillusioned, proud old man!”

“Marjorieums, I'm going to like this game,” announced Page. “It's going to be worth playing.”

“Isn't it? Oh, dearest, what a good time we're going to have! And what interesting people we're going to find—and help a little!”

So, in the radiance of a good deed done, they skimmed through the lengthening shadows, and after dining out-of-doors found their way home in the tender light of the young June moon.

The next morning, promising to come back in time to motor out into the country again for luncheon, Dolliver cheerfully betook himself to the business district. Marjorie saw him no more until after twelve, when he returned less buoyantly, a deep wrinkle between his brows.

“This is young Mr. Golden-Rule Dolliver, isn't it?”

“What's the matter, dear?” asked his wife. “Didn't you get it?”

“I don't know whether I did or not. I think he thought I lied.”

“Who thought you lied?” she indignantly demanded.

“Corbin. Marjorie, do you know who our poor but proud old party was yesterday? He was Galen Corbin, President of the D. & G. L.—”

“Page Dolliver!”

“—Who could buy and sell us several thousand times over, and who probably owns more automobiles at this moment than we shall ever own in all our lives.”

“Dearest! That shabby old man?'

“That shabby old man. We wondered why he wasn't successful, you remember. When I shown into his office this morning there he sat, large as life and twice as natural, in the same old gray suit. But it had been pressed and his shoes had been polished and his collar was clean—and he was Galen Corbin.”

“Page! What did you do?”

“Do? Why, I grinned and looked astonished like the cheerful idiot I am, and said, 'Good morning, sir,'”

“And he?”

“He just sat there behind his desk and looked at me, and his eyes were like two gimlets. 'Oh,' said he, with a crooked, sardonic sort of a smile, 'this is young Mr. Dolliver—Golden-Rule Dolliver, isn't it?”

“You don't mean that he—wasn't he nice to you?”

“Oh, he was very 'nice'! So 'nice' he gave me creeps up my spine! I immediately expressed my surprise in discovering that we had met before, and said that we had no idea yesterday that we were entertaining so distinguished a guest.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said, 'Undoubtedly!'—just like that,” dryly replied her husband. “He also said that I had placed him in my debt, and then without giving me a chance to say another word he reminded me that I was there to talk about draught gear.”

“But—why”—Marjorie blinked and gasped—“didn't you explain? Didn't you make him understand—”

“Make him understand nothing?” retorted Dolliver, wrathfully. “He made me understand that it was up to me to talk business—and nothing else! Well, I talked business! I talked it hard for one solid half-hour. I never worked so hard in my life. At the end of the half-hour he looked at his watch and said: 'Very well, Mr. Dolliver.'” Page reproduced convincingly the old man's curt, detached manner. “'I'll think this over and let you know my decision within a day or two. Good morning.' And that was all.”

“And you think he thought—”

“He thought I knew who he was all the time and that I had tried to work him.”

“But—didn't you do anything more? Didn't you say anything?”

“What was there to do or to say? There was just one thing left for me. I went into Jim Stanley's office—he's Corbin's assistant and is rather friendly to us—and told him the whole story. He said he'd sound the old man and try to put me straight with him.”

“Oh, dearie, I'm so sorry! But it can't be as bad as you think! Surely he'd never let a little thing like that decide an important matter of business! Perhaps— There's the telephone. Will you answer it?”

“What did I tell you?” exploded Dolliver, rejoining her after a moment of excited telephonic conversation. “That was Stanley. Five minutes after I left the office Corbin sent for Kleinert's representative and arranged to give them as much of the order as they can swing, and the rest goes to Hoffman and Jones.”

“And you?”

“We don't get a dollar of it! When Jim asked him why, the old man grinned that wicked, crooked grin of his and said: 'That young Dolliver is a leetle—too—smooth. He's so smooth he almost fooled me, but he overdid it. He's just a—leetle—slippery.'”

For some time they discussed the matter with indignation, and she tried in pretty feminine ways to comfort him. Presently, after a silence, he said, sighing:

“Well—that's over, and there's no use crying about it now. But I can tell you one thing, anyhow, Marjorie. The next time we see a gray-haired old man moiling along in the dust and heat, he can just keep on trudging!”

“Oh, not every old, tired man is a bloodless corporation,” demurred his wife, patting his cheek. “And one rain-drop doesn't make a deluge. Let's try it again, shall we?”

“Not on your life!” stated Dolliver, with decision. “Not any more of that in mine!”

“Just once more?” she coaxed.

“The car's at the door, Mrs. Dolliver,” announced the maid.