To the Highest Bidder. Florence Morse Kingsley
light Stephen Jarvis appeared very nearly what he had made of himself in the course of some thirty laborious years. Nature had provided him with a big-boned, powerful body, topped by a head in no wise remarkable for its beauty, yet significant as the compact rounded end of a steel projectile; eyes of no particular color, deep-set beneath penthouse brows; a nose, high in its bony structure, curving at the tip, with a suggestion of scorn; a jaw, heavy but clear-cut, well furnished with strong, even teeth. Jarvis was born a farmer’s son, poor with the poverty of sparse acres, sparsely cultivated through successive generations of uncalculating, simple-hearted men, content to live and die as had their forbears. It was far otherwise with Stephen Jarvis. His initial conclusion, derived from keen-eyed observation and comparison, resulted in an active hatred of the grinding poverty his fathers had accepted with settled stoicism as the common lot. He would not, he resolved, remain poor. He would in some way—in any way—acquire houses, lands, money. This single idea, planted, rooted, and grown mighty, brought forth fruit after its kind. In ten years’ time he had climbed out of the walled pit where he had found himself; in the decade which followed, having learned, experimentally, of the compelling power of the fixed idea doggedly adhered to, he had gone on, adding more houses, more lands, more money to what he already possessed; and this process having by now become somewhat monotonously easy, he had reached for and seized political power of the sort most easily grasped by the large hand of wealth. He still continued almost mechanically to loan money at a high rate of interest, to execute and foreclose mortgages, but there was no longer zest or excitement in the game. And there intervened disquieting moments like the present when he perceived that, after all, he was not successful, as the world counted success; nor rich, as the world counted wealth; moments when he realized his loneliness and the coldness of his hearth-stone, where neither friends nor children gathered.
His wife, dead more than two years, had been a dull, emotionless woman, with a flat, pale, expressionless face and a high-shouldered, angular figure. Jarvis had married her without pretence of passion because she had money, and in his poverty-pinched youth he had thought of little else. He had never been unkind to the woman who bore his name. He had, in fact, paid very little attention to her, and she had trodden the dull round of her existence unprotestingly and died as unobtrusively as she had lived. A portrait of the late Mrs. Jarvis in the cold medium of black and white crayons, hung above the mantel. The man’s eyes rested upon it mechanically as he lifted them from the dull report of a dully rancorous speech delivered on a late public occasion by his political opponent in the county. The portrait failed to arouse memories either sweet or bitter; but Jarvis observed that his housekeeper in her annual spring cleaning had taken the pains to protect the picture in its showy, expensive frame. He frowned as he noticed the barred pink netting from behind which his wife’s plain features looked forth with a suggestion of pained protest. The effect was distinctly unpleasing. He caught himself wondering irritably why the picture should confront him thus; portraits were foolish, unmeaning things, anyway; shrouded with pink tarlatan they became impossible. His gaze still lingered frowningly upon the picture when there came a dubious tap upon the panels of the door.
“What d’you want?” demanded Jarvis sharply, as he recognized the intruder. “I thought I told you not to disturb me this morning.”
“Well, I told her so; but she wouldn’t go away,” the woman apologized. “I guess ’f I let her stan’ there till she’s good an’ tired o’ waitin’, she’ll——”
“Kindly acquaint me with the name of the person who wishes to see me, Mrs. Dumser,” he interrupted, with a quick, choleric lift of the hand.
“It’s that Preston girl,” the woman said sullenly. “I told her you was busy and——”
“Show her in at once,” her employer ordered briefly. On the whole he welcomed the interruption. There was a certain excitement akin to that experienced by the sportsman when he subdues some struggling wild creature to his will. It was a species of weak folly, he told himself, to entertain anything like compassion for borrowers of money who could not pay. And Stephen Jarvis was not a weak man. He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with all the various excuses, subterfuges and pitiful expedients of such luckless individuals, as well as complete master of the final processes by which he was wont to detach them from their forfeited possessions. His mouth, long, straight, expressionless, and shaded by a closely clipped mustache, tightened as Barbara Preston entered.
He glanced at her sharply as the girl sank into a chair opposite the desk without waiting to be asked.
The light from the long French windows fell full upon the slender young figure in its plain black gown, and her face, seen against the sombre background afforded by rows of leather-bound law-books, appeared vividly alive, defiantly youthful, like a spray of peach blossoms against a leaden sky.
“You wished to see me, I believe,” said Jarvis, perceiving that the girl was struggling with involuntary fear of him, a fear heightened by her surroundings. “What can I do for you?”
She met his gaze unflinchingly.
“I have come,” she said, “to see if you will give me a little more time. It is going to be a good apple year, and—and I’ll work—hard to save the farm.”
Her eyes darkened and widened; a quick color sprang to lips and cheeks, as when a flag is suddenly unfurled to the wind.
“If you’ll only give me a chance!” she cried.
“What sort of a chance are you looking for?” he wanted to know.
Barbara’s eyes fell before his steady gaze.
“I—want——” she began, and stopped, obviously searching for forgotten words and phrases.
He waited imperturbably for her to go on.
“I want you to let me stay—in my home.”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“I thought we discussed that matter pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I can think of nothing more to say on the subject.”
“But,” she persisted, “I don’t intend to give it up. I—can’t.”
He was silent. But his look angered her unreasonably.
“You don’t want the farm!” she burst out, with sudden hot indignation. “You’ve got most of the farms about here now, and you’ll have the others in time, I suppose.”
“You appear to know a good deal about my business,” he said ironically. “But you’re right. I don’t want the Preston farm. I don’t want any of ’em. Why should I? Most of them are like yours, worn out, worthless. But the owners want my money—your father did. And I let him have what he asked for. I might have refused. But I let him have a thousand dollars, and he took it, did as he liked with it—drank it up, for all I know. And now you come here begging——”
The girl sprang to her feet; her gray eyes blazed angrily upon him.
“I’m not begging!” she cried. “All I want is the chance to pay you—every cent, and I could do it—I will do it.”
“Perhaps you will tell me how you are going about it,” he said coldly.
She sank back into her chair.
“Yes!” she said slowly. “I am—begging. I am begging for time. Give me another year—give me this summer, and let me—try!”
He was studying the girl’s passionate face with a curious interest. A singular idea had presented itself to him, and he was considering it half mockingly. Nevertheless it lent a human sound to his voice as he answered her.
“See here, Miss Preston,” he said. “I admire your pluck and energy. But let me tell you that you don’t want to hold on to that farm. The orchards are too old to be productive; the land needs fertilizers, rotation, all sorts of things that require brains and money. That old fool, Morrison, hasn’t managed the place properly, and can’t. It’s a losing fight, and you’d better give it up—peaceably.”
“But I want