The Banker and the Bear

Dick was, indeed, somewhat bewildered and disappointed. Had the events of Christmas Eve and the few following days occurred during the first month of her stay with the Bagsburys, she would have made no attempt to look beneath the surface, but would have packed her trunks and fled out of that grimy atmosphere with the least possible delay; and poor Jack Dorlin would have had to pull up his stakes and follow, who knows whither. But in the six months she had developed an affection for both John and Alice. She could not have told you why. They were totally different from her other friends. But our affections are based on no analysis. We like or love, not at all because we see in this person or that a certain combination of qualities, no more than we like beefsteak because it contains carbon and hydrogen and other uninviting elements in a fixed proportion. Perhaps Dick liked John and Alice because they had become so fond of her, because they gave her their confidences, or because she had brought a sweeter, fresher influence into their lives than either had known before, like a breath of country air in a smoky factory.

She thought a good deal in the course of the first weeks following old Bagsbury's death and the reading of the will. She could not forget the scene she had witnessed, and in which she had finally taken a part, in the dingy little private office at the bank. She felt keenly the pathos of the old man's death there, over the desk which held his whole world; his head among the papers which had received all the affection that his withered soul could give. But it was not the old man's death that had made her cry that night as she drove home alone in the jolting carriage; it was the look she had seen in the son's face as he stood there, his back to the still figure on the sofa, and his eyes fastened greedily on those same papers. In this sordid presence even death seemed to lose its dignity. Yes, Dick had cried all the way home, simply with an uncontrollable disgust.