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diff --git a/21613.txt b/21613.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a5793b --- /dev/null +++ b/21613.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5474 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Stairs, by Henry B. Fuller + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: On the Stairs + +Author: Henry B. Fuller + +Release Date: May 26, 2007 [EBook #21613] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE STAIRS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +ON THE STAIRS + +by +Henry B. Fuller + +Author of _Lines Long and Short_ + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + +The Riverside Press Cambridge + +1918 + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY HENRY B. FULLER + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +_Published March 1918_ + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +This volume may seem less a Novel than a Sketch of a Novel or a Study +for a Novel. It might easily be amplified; but, like other recent work +of mine, it was written in the conviction that story-telling, whatever +form it take, can be done within limits narrower than those now +generally employed. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + +ON THE STAIRS + +PART I + +I + + +In the year 1873-- + +No, do not turn away from such an opening; I shall reach our own day +within a paragraph or so. + +In the year 1873, then, Johnny McComas was perfectly willing to stand to +one side while Raymond Prince, surrounded by several of the fellows, +came down, in his own negligent and self-assured way, the main stairway +of Grant's Private Academy. For Johnny was newer there; Johnny was +younger in this world by a year or two, at an age when a year or two +makes a difference; and Johnny had but lately left behind what might be +described as a condition of servitude. So Johnny yielded the right of +way. He lowered his little snub nose by a few degrees, took some of the +gay smile out of his twinkling blue eyes, and waited with an upward +glance of friendly yet deferential sobriety until Raymond should have +passed. + +"How are you, Johnny?" asked Raymond carelessly. + +"I'm pretty well," replied Johnny, in all modesty. + +In the year 1916-- + +Yes, I told you we should reach our own times presently. + +In the year 1916, then, Raymond Prince was standing to one side, whether +willing or not, while John W. McComas, attended by several men who would +make their cares his own, came down the big marble stairway of the +Mid-Continent National Bank. Raymond, who had his cares too, would +gladly have been included in the company (or, rather, have replaced it +altogether); but he saw clearly that the time was not propitious. +McComas looked out through this swarm of lesser people, half-saw Prince +as in a mist, and gave him unsmilingly an abstracted half-bow. + +"How do you do?" he mumbled impersonally. + +"I'm pretty well," returned Prince, in a toneless voice. But he was far +from that, whether in mind or estate. + +Between these two dates and these two incidents lies most of my story. +Be quite sure that I shall tell it in my own fashion. + + +II + +First, however, this: I do not intend to magnify the Academy and its +stairway. The Academy did very well in its day, and it happened to be +within easy distance of James Prince's residence. If its big green doors +were flanked on one side by a grocery and on the other by a laundry, and +if its stairway was worn untidily by other feet than those of Dr. +Grant's boys, I shall simply point out that this was all in the day of +small things and that Fastidiousness was still upon her way. Should this +not satisfy you, I will state that, in the year following, the Academy +moved into other quarters: it lodged itself in a near-by private +residence whose owner, in real estate, sensed down-heeled Decadence +stealing that way a few years before any of his neighbors felt it, and +who made his shifts accordingly. If even this does not satisfy you, I +might sketch the entrance and stairway, somewhere in Massachusetts, +which are to know the footfalls of Lawrence D. McComas, aged ten, +grandson of Johnny; but such a step would perhaps take us too far afield +as well as slightly into the future. One does not pass a lad through +_that_ gateway on the spur of the moment. + +Nor ought I to magnify, on the other hand, the marble stairway of the +Mid-Continent. This was not one of the town's greater banks; and the +stairway was at the disposal not only of the bank's clientele, but at +that of sixteen tiers of tenants. However, it represented some advanced +architect's ideal of grandeur, and it served to make the bank's +president seem haughty when in truth he was only preoccupied. + +As you may now surmise, this story, even at its highest, will not throw +millions on the habituated and indifferent air; nor, at its most +distended, will it push the pride of life too far. That has been done +already in sufficing measure by many others. Let us ride here an even +keel and keep well within rule and reason. + +I am simply to tell you how, as the years moved on, John McComas climbed +the stairs of life from the bottom to the top--or so, at least, he was +commonly considered to have done; and how, through the same years, +Raymond Prince passed slowly and reluctantly along the same stairs from +top to bottom--or so his critics usually regarded his course. Nor +without some color of justice, I presume that they will pass each other +somewhere near the middle of my volume. + + +III + +In 1873 James Prince was living in a small, choice residential district +near the Lake. Its choiceness was great, but was not duly guarded. The +very smallness of the neighborhood--a triumphant record of early +fortunes--put it upon a precarious basis: there was all too slight a +margin against encroachments. And, besides, the discovery came to be +made, some years later, that it was upon the wrong side of the river +altogether. But it held up well in 1873; and it continued to do so +through the eighties. Perhaps it was not until the middle or later +nineties that the real exodus began. Some of the early magnates had +died; some had evaporated financially; others had come to perceive, +either for themselves or through their children, that the road to social +consideration now ran another way. In due course a congeries of bulky +and grandiose edifices, built lavishly in the best taste of their own +day, remained to stare vacantly at the infrequent passer-by, or to +tremble before the imminent prospect of sinking to unworthy uses: odd, +old-time megatheriums stranded ineptly in their mortgage-mud. But +through the seventies the neighborhood held up its head and people came +from far to see it. + +James Prince lived in one of these houses; and, around the corner, old +Jehiel Prince lingered on in another. + +James was, of course, Raymond's father. Jehiel was his grandfather. +Raymond, when we take him up, was at the age of thirteen. And Johnny +McComas, if you care to know, was close on twelve. + +Jehiel Prince was of remote New England origin, and had come West by way +of York State. He had been born somewhere between Utica and Rochester. +He put up his house on no basis of domestic sociability; it was designed +as a sort of monument to his personal success. He had not left the East +to be a failure, or to remain inconspicuous. His contractor--or his +architect, if one had been employed--had imagined a heavy, square affair +of dull-red brick, with brown-stone trimmings in heavy courses. Items: a +high basement, an undecorated mansard in slate; a big, clumsy pair of +doors, set in the middle of all, at the top of a heavily balustraded +flight of brown-stone steps; one vast window on the right of the doors +to light the "parlor," and another like it, on the left, to light the +"library": a facade reared before any allegiance to "periods," and in a +style best denominated local or indigenous. Jehiel was called a +capitalist and had a supplementary office in the high front basement; +and here he was fretting by himself, off and on, in 1873; and here he +continued to fret by himself, off and on, until 1880, when he fretted +himself from earth. He was an unhappy man, with no essential mastery of +life. His wife existed somewhere upstairs. They seldom spoke--indeed +seldom met--unless papers to shift the units of a perplexed estate were +up for consideration. Sometimes her relatives stole into the house to +see her and hoped, with fearfulness, not to meet her husband in some +passageway. He himself had plenty of relatives, by blood as well as by +marriage; too many of these were rascals, and they kept him busy. The +town, in the seventies, was at the adventurous, formative stage; almost +everybody was leaving the gravel walks of Probity to take a short cut +across the fair lawns of Success, and the social landscape was a good +deal cut up and disfigured. + +"Poor relations!"--such was Jehiel's brief, scornful rating of the less +capable among these supernumeraries. A poor relation represented, to +him, the lowest form of animal life. + +And when the chicane and intrigue of the more clever among them roused +his indignation he would exclaim: "They're putting me through the +smut-machine!"--an ignominious, exasperating treatment which he refused +to undergo without loud protests. These protests often reduced his wife +to trembling and to tears. At such times she might hide an elder +sister--one on the pursuit of some slight dole--in a small back bedroom, +far from sight and hearing. + +An ugly house, inhabited by unhappy people. Perhaps I should brighten +things by bringing forward, just here, Elsie, Jehiel's beautiful +granddaughter. But he had no granddaughter. We must let Elsie pass. + +Yet a fresh young shoot budding from a gnarled old trunk would afford a +piquant contrast--has done so hundreds of times. Jehiel Prince +undoubtedly _was_ gnarled and old and tough; a charming granddaughter to +cajole or wheedle him in the library, or to relax his indignant tension +over young men during their summer attendance on swing or hammock, would +have her uses. Yet a swing or a hammock would suggest, rather than the +bleak stateliness of Jehiel's urban environment, some fair, remote +domain with lawns and gardens; and Jehiel was far from possessing--or +from wanting to possess--a country-house. Elsie may be revived, if +necessary; but I can promise nothing. I rather think you have heard the +last of her. + +James lived a few hundred yards from his father; his house bulked to +much the same effect. It was another symmetrical, indigenous box--in +stone, however, and not in brick. It had its mortgage. If this mortgage +was ever paid up, another came later--a mortgage which passed through +various renewals and which, as values were falling, was always renewed +for a lesser amount and was always demanding ready money to meet the +difference. In later years Raymond, with this formidable weight still +pressing upon him, received finally an offer of relief and liberation; +some prosperous upstart, with plans of his own, said he would chance the +property, mortgage and all, if paid a substantial bonus for doing so. + +The premises included a stable. I mention the stable on account of +Johnny McComas. He lived in it. Downstairs, the landau and the two +horses, and another horse, and a buggy and phaeton, and sometimes a cow; +upstairs, Johnny and his father and mother. Johnny could look out +through a crumpled dimity curtain across the back yard and could see his +father freezing ice-cream on a Sunday forenoon on the back kitchen +porch; and he could also look into one of Raymond's windows on the floor +above. + +Every so often he would beg:-- + +"Oh, father, let me do it,--please!" + +Then he would lose the double prospect and get, instead, a plate of +vanilla with a tin spoon in it. + +Raymond, who had no mastering passion for games, sat a good deal in his +room, sometimes at one of the side windows; occasionally at the back +one, in which case Johnny was quite welcome to look. Raymond had more +desks than one, and books everywhere on the walls between them. He had a +strong bent toward study, and was even beginning to dip into literary +composition. He studied when he might better have been at play, and he +kept up his diary under a student lamp into all hours of the night. He +had been reading lately about Paris, and he was piecing out the +elementary instruction of the Academy by getting together a collection +of French grammars and dictionaries. He had about decided that sometime +he would go to live on that island in the Seine near Notre Dame. + +His father told him he was working too hard and too late--that it would +hurt his health and probably injure his eyes. His mother made no comment +and gave no advice. She was an invalid and thus had absorbing interests +of her own. Raymond kept on reading and writing. + +Perhaps I should begin to sketch, just about here, his awakening regard +for some Gertrude or Adele, and his young rivalry with Johnny McComas +for her favor; telling how Johnny won over Raymond the privilege of +carrying her books to school, and how, in the end, he won Gertrude or +Adele herself from Raymond, and married her. Fiddlesticks! Please put +all such conventional procedures out of your head, and take what I am +prepared to give you. The school was a boys' school. There was no +Gertrude or Adele--as yet--any more than there was an Elsie. Raymond +kept to his books and indulged in no juvenile philanderings. Forget all +such foolish stereotypings of fancy. + +As for the romance and the rivalry: when that came, it came with a vast +difference. + + +IV + +Jehiel Prince was a capitalist. So was James: a capitalist, and the son +of a capitalist. They had some interests in common, and others apart. +There was a bank, and there were several large downtown business-blocks +whose tenants required a lot of bookkeeping, and there was a horse-car +line. There was a bus-line, too, between the railroad depots and the +hotels. James destined Raymond for the bank. He would hardly go to +college, but at seventeen or so would begin on the collection-register +or some such matter; later he might come to be a receiving-teller; +pretty soon he might rise to an apprehension of banking as a science +and have a line as an official in the _Bankers' Gazette_. Beyond that he +might go as far as he was able. James thought that, thus favored in +early years, the boy might go far. + +But Raymond had just taken on Rome, and was finding it even more +interesting than Paris. The Academy's professor of ancient history began +to regard him as a prodigy. Then, somehow or other, Raymond got hold of +Gregorovius, with his "City of Rome in the Middle Ages"--though his +teacher did not know of this, and would have been sure to consider it an +undesirable deviation from the straight and necessary path; and +thenceforth the dozens of ordinary boys about him counted, I feel sure, +for less than ever. + +Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put myself into the story +as one of the characters. Then the many I's will no longer refer to the +author named on the title-page, but will represent the direct +participation--direct, even though inconspicuous--of a person whose +name, status, and general nature will be made manifest, incidentally +and gradually, as we proceed. You object that though one's status and +general nature may be revealed "gradually," such can scarcely be the +case as regards one's name? But if I tell you that my Christian name is, +let us say, Oliver, and then intimate in some succeeding section that my +surname is Ormsby, and then do not disclose my middle initial--which may +be W--until the middle of the book (in some documentary connection, +perhaps), shall I not be doing the thing "gradually"? + +Oliver W. Ormsby. H'm! I'm not so sure that I like it. Well, my name may +turn out, after all, to be something quite different. And possibly I may +be found to be without any middle initial whatever. + +But to return to the method itself. You will find it pursued in many +good novels and in many bad ones; with admirable discretion--to make an +instance--in "The Way of All Flesh"; and the procedure may be humbly +copied here. It will involve, of course, a rather close attendance on +both Raymond and Johnny through a long term of years; but perhaps the +difficulties involved--or, rather, the awkwardnesses--can be got round +in one way or another. + +At the Academy we like Raymond well enough, on the whole-- + +You see at once how the method applies: I make myself an attendant +there, and I place my age midway between the ages of the other two. + +As I say, we liked Raymond well enough, yet did not quite feel that he +coalesced. "Coalesced" was hardly the word we used--such verbal +grandeurs were reserved for our "compositions"; but you know what I +mean. Another point to be made clear without delay is this: that when +Johnny appeared at the Academy, he had lately left behind him the +previous condition of servitude involved in a lodgment above the landau, +the phaeton, and sometimes the cow. His father and mother, as I saw them +and remember them, appeared to be rather nice people. Perhaps they had +lately come from some small country town and had not been able, at +first, to realize themselves and their abilities to the best advantage +in the city. Assuredly his father knew how to drive horses and to care +for them; and he had an intuitive knack for safeguarding his +self-respect. And Johnny's mother was perfectly competent to cook and to +keep house--even above a stable--most neatly. If Johnny's curtain was +rumpled, that was Johnny's own incorrigible fault. The window-sill was a +wide one, and Johnny, I found, used it as a catch-all. He kept there a +few boxes of "bugs," as we called his pinned-down specimens, and an +album of postage-stamps that was always in a state of metamorphosis. He +had some loose stamps too, and sometimes, late in the afternoon or on +Saturdays, we "traded." Johnny's mother was likely to caution us about +her freshly scrubbed floors, and sometimes gave me a cooky on my +leaving. I never heard of Raymond's having been there. + +But presently the trading stopped, and the "bugs," however firmly pinned +down, took their flight. Johnny's father and mother "moved"--that was +the brief, unadorned, sufficing formula. It was all accepted as +inevitable; hardly for a boy a little past twelve, like myself, to +question the movements of Olympian elders; nor even, in fact, to feel an +abiding interest in them when I had seen them but three or four times in +all. I never speculated--never asked where they had come from; never +considered the nature of their tenure (not wondering how much Johnny's +father may have been paid for driving the two bays and washing the +parlor and bedroom windows and milking the cow, when there was one, and +not figuring the reduction in wages due to the renting value of the +three or four small rooms they occupied); nor did I much concern myself +as to whither they might have gone. Probably opportunity had opened up a +more promising path. However, the path did not lead far; for Johnny, a +month or two later, made his first appearance at the Academy, on the +opening of the fall term. During the preceding year he had been going to +a public school "across the tracks" and had played with a boisterous +crowd in a big cindered yard. + +Therefore, when Raymond, surrounded by half a dozen other boys, took +occasion, on the stairs, to say:-- + +"How are you, Johnny?"-- + +And Johnny, with his back to the wall of the landing, replied:-- + +"I'm pretty well,"-- + +Johnny may have meant that, despite the novelty and the strangeness of +his situation, he was very well, indeed; feeling, doubtless, that he was +finally where he had a right to be and that his alert face was turned +the proper way. + +The boys about Raymond were asking him to take part in a football game. +It was not that Raymond was especially popular; but he could run. In +that simple day football was football--principally a matter of running +and of straightforward kicking; and Raymond could do both better than +any other boy in the school. He could also outjump any of us--when he +would take the trouble to try. In fact, his physical faculties were in +his legs; his arms were nowhere. He was never able to throw either far +or straight. Some of his early attempts at throwing were met with +shouts of ridicule, and he never tried the thing further. If he fell +upon the ill luck of finding a ball in his hands, he would toss it to +somebody else with an air of facetious negligence. To stand, as Johnny +McComas could stand, and throw a ball straight up for seventy-five feet +and then catch it without stirring a foot from the spot where he was +planted, would have been an utter impossibility for him. In fact, +Raymond simply cultivated his obviously natural gifts; he never exerted +himself systematically to make good any of his deficiencies. He was so +as a boy; and he remained so always. + +In those early days we had no special playgrounds. We commonly used the +streets. There was little traffic. Pedestrians took their chances on the +sidewalks with leapfrog and the like, and we took ours, in turn, in the +wide roadway with "pom-pom-peel-away" and similar games. Football, +however, would take us to a vacant corner lot, some two streets away. +Some absentee owner in the East was doubtless paying taxes on it with +hopes of finally recouping himself through the unearned increment. +Meanwhile it ran somewhat to rubbish and tin cans, to bare spots from +which adjoining homemakers had removed irregular squares of turf, and to +holes in the dry, brown earth where potatoes had been baked with a +minimum of success and a maximum of wood ashes and acrid smoke. It was +on the way to this frequented tract that Raymond carelessly let fall a +word about Johnny McComas. Perhaps he need not have said that Johnny had +lately been living above his father's stable--but he spoke without +special animus. A few of the boys thought Johnny's intrusion odd, even +cheeky; but most of them, employing the social assimilability of +youth,--especially that of youth in the Middle West,--laid little stress +upon it. Johnny made his place, in due time and on his own merits. Or +shall I say, rather, by his own powers? + + +V + +You are not to suppose that while I was free to visit Johnny in the +stable, I was not free to visit Raymond in the house. Though my people +lived rather modestly on a side street, the interior of the Prince +residence was not unknown to me. On one occasion Raymond took me up to +his room so that I might hear some of his writings. He had been to +Milwaukee or to Indianapolis, and had found himself moved to set down an +account of his three days away from home. He led me through several big +rooms downstairs before we got to his own particular quarters above. The +furnishing of these rooms impressed me at the time; but I know, now, +that they were heavy and clumsy when they were meant to be rich and +massive, and were meretricious when they were meant to be elegant. It +was all of the Second Empire, qualified by an erratic, exaggerated touch +that was natively American. I am afraid I found it rather superb and was +made uncomfortable--was even intimidated by it; all the more so that +Raymond took it completely for granted. One room contained a big +orchestrion with many pipes in tiers, like an organ's. On one occasion I +heard it play the overture to "William Tell," and it managed the +"Storm" very handily. There was a large, three-cornered piano in the +same room--one of the sort I never could feel at home with; and this +instrument, more than the other, I suppose, gave Raymond his futile and +disadvantageous start toward music. Travel; art; anything but the bank. + +I have no idea at what time of day he introduced me into the house, but +it was an hour at which the men, as well as the women, were at home. In +one part or another of the hall I met his mother. She was dark and lean; +without being tall, she looked gaunt. She seemed occupied with herself, +as she moved out of one shadow into another, and she gave scant +attention to a casual boy. Raymond was really no more hospitable than +any young and growing organism must be; but perhaps she was thankful +that it was only one boy, instead of three or four. + +In another room, somewhere on the first floor, I had a glimpse of his +father. I remember him as a sedate man who did not insist. If he set a +boy right, it was done but verbally; the boy was left to see the +justness of the point and to act on it for himself. I gathered, later, +that James Prince had done little, unaided, for himself; whatever he had +accomplished had been in conjunction with other men--with his father, +particularly; and when his father died, a few years later, he was the +chief heir--and he never added much to what he had received. To him fell +the property--and its worries. The worries, I surmise, were the greater +part of it all. Everything has to be paid for, and James Prince's easily +gained success was paid for, through the ensuing years, with +considerable anxieties and perturbations. + +It was his father, I presume, who was with him as I passed the library +door: a bent, gray man, with a square head and a yellow face. A third +man was between them; a tall, dry, cold fellow with iron-gray beard and +no mustache--a face in the old New England tradition. This man was, of +course, their lawyer, and I judge that he gave them little comfort. I +felt him as chill and slow, as enjoying the tying and untying of +legalities with a stiff, clammy hand, and as unlikely to be hurried on +account of any temperament possessed by himself or manifested by his +clients. Fire, in a wide sweep, had overtaken the town a year or two +before--a community owned by the Eastern seaboard and mortgaged to its +eyebrows; and the Princes, as I learned years later, had been building +extensively on borrowed capital just before the fire-doom came. Probably +too great a part of the funds employed came from their own bank. + +Raymond, once the second floor was reached, showed me his desks and +bookcases; also a new sort of pen which he had thought to be able to +use, but which he had cast aside. And he offered to read me his account +of the three days in Milwaukee, or wherever. + +"If you would like to hear...?" he said, with a sort of bashful +determination. + +"Just as you please," I replied, patient then, as ever after, in the +face of the arts. + +Nothing much seemed to have happened--nothing that I, at least, should +have taken the trouble to set down; but a good part of his fifteen +pages, as he read them, seemed interesting and even important. I suppose +this came from the way he did it. As early as thirteen he had the +knack; then, and always after, he enjoyed writing for its own sake. I +feel sure that his father did not quite approve this taste. His +grandfather, who had had a lesser education and felt an exaggerated +respect for learning, may have had more patience. He talked for years +about endowing some college, but never did it; when the time finally +came, he was far too deep in his financial worries. + +James Prince, as I have noted, occasionally mentioned to Raymond his +conviction that he was wasting his time with all this scribbling, and +that so much work by artificial light was imperiling his eyesight. + +"What good is it all going to do you?" I once heard him ask. His tone +was resigned, as if he had put the question several times before. "I +don't think I'd write quite so much, if I were you." + +Raymond looked at him in silence. "Not write?" he seemed to say. "You +might as well ask me not to breathe." + +"At least do it by daylight," his father suggested, or +counseled,--scarcely urged. "You won't have any eyes at all by the time +you're thirty." + +But Raymond liked his double student-lamp with green shades. He liked +the quiet and retirement of late hours. I believe he liked even the +smell and smear of the oil. + +His father spoke, as I have reported; but he never took away the pen or +put the light out. The boy seemingly had too strong a "slant": a +misfortune--or, at least, a disadvantage--which a concerned parent must +somehow endure. But he did take a more decided tack later on: he never +said a word about Raymond's going to college, and Raymond, as a fact, +never went. He fed his own intellectual furnace, and fed it in his own +way. He learned an immense number of useless and unrelated things. In +time they came to cumber him. Perhaps college would have been better, +after all. + +I never knew Raymond to show any affection for either of his parents; +and he had no brothers and sisters. His father was an essentially kind, +just man, and might have welcomed an occasional little manifestation of +feeling. One day he told Raymond he had no heart. That was as far as +emotion and the expression of emotion could carry him. Raymond's mother +might have been kindly too, if she had not had herself. But a new +doctor, a new remedy, a new draught from a new quarter--and her boy was +instantly nowhere. Raymond's own position seemed to be that life in +families was the ordained thing and was to be accepted. Well, this was +the family ordained for him, and he would put up with it as best he +might. But I kept on developing my own impression of him; and I see now +just what that impression was going to be. Raymond, almost from the +start, felt himself as an independent, detached, isolated individual, +and he must have his little zone of quiet round him. Why in the world he +should ever have married...! + +I never knew him to show gratitude for anything given him by his +parents. On the other hand, I never heard him ask them for anything. He +possessed none of the little ingenuities by which boys sometimes secure +a bit of pocket-money. If he wanted anything, he went without it until +it was offered. Frankly, he seldom had to wait long. + +Not that what came was always the right thing. He showed me his +fountain-pen--one of the early half-failures--with some disdain. He +always carried a number of things in his pocket, but never the pen. I +myself tried it one day, and it went well enough; I should have been +glad to have it for my own. But steel pens sufficed him; save once, when +I saw him, in a high mood, experimenting fantastically with a quill one. + +He cared no more about his clothes than any of the rest of us. He never +laid any real stress on them at any time of life. He developed early a +notion of the sufficiency of interior furnishings; mere external +upholstery never quite secured his interest. I heard his father once or +twice complain of his looking careless and shabby. He waited with +equanimity until his father could take him to the clothier's. He asked +but one thing; that there should be no indulgence in sartorial +novelties at his expense. And I never met a sedater taste in neckties. + +Three or four were hanging over the gas-jet, close to the window; they +were all dark blues or grays, and most of them frayed. He expected a new +one about Christmas; no hurry. + +From that window, across the back yard, we saw Johnny McComas, in a +bright new red tie, busy at his own window. I waved my hand, and he +waved back. Raymond looked at him, but made no special sign. Johnny was +packing up his specimens and his postage-stamps, preparatory to the +family hegira, though neither of us knew. + + +VI + +Raymond, who might have asked for almost anything, asked for nothing. +Johnny, who was in position to ask for next to nothing, asked for almost +everything. He was constantly teasing his parents, so far as my +observation went; and his teasing was a form of criticism. "You are not +doing the right thing by me"--such might have seemed his plaint. He was +beginning to spread, to reach out: acquisitiveness and assimilativeness +were to be his two watchwords. He hankered after the externalities; he +wanted "things." If it was only a new stamp-album, he wanted it hard, +and he said so. I shall not go so far as to say that he hectored his +parents into sending him to our school. They were probably feeling, on +their own account, that they had come to town for better things than +they had been getting; and likely enough they met his demands halfway. +There was usually a certain element of cheeriness in his nagging; but +the cheeriness was quite secondary to the insistence. + +"Oh, come, mother!" or, "Oh, father, now!" was commonly Johnny's opening +formula, employed with a smile, wheedling or protesting, as the occasion +seemed to require. + +And, "Oh, well...!" was commonly the opening formula for the +response--meaning, in completed form, "Well, if we must, we must." + +However, his parents were probably ready to meet with an open mind the +scorings of their young, sole critic, thinking that his urgency might +advance themselves no less than him. Well, in the autumn Johnny turned +up at the Academy with an equipment that included everything approved +and needed; and he was not long in letting us know that his father was +manager in the supply-yard of a large firm of contractors and builders. +His father had spent his earlier married years, it transpired, about the +grounds of a small-town "depot," and knew a good deal in regard to +lumber and cement. + +To most of us fathers were fathers and businesses were +businesses--things to be accepted without comment or criticism. Our own +youthfulness, and the social tone of the day and region, discouraged +either. If I thought anything about it, I must have thought, as I think +still, that it was a manly and satisfying matter to come to grips with +the serviceable actualities of the building trades. Construction, in its +various phases, still seems to me a more useful and more tonic concern +than brokerage, for example, and similar forms of office life. + +Johnny soon suggested that I go with him, some Saturday afternoon, to +the "yard." I asked Raymond to join us. Raymond had just come on Gothic +architecture and was studying its historical phases. He was picking up +points about the English cathedrals and was making drawings to +illustrate the development of buttresses and of window tracery. The yard +was only a mile and a half away and the three of us frolicked loosely +along the streets until we got there. Johnny's father was going about +the place in an admirable pair of new blue overalls, and carried a +thick, blunt pencil behind one ear. He showed an independent, breezy +manner that had not been very marked before. He was loud and clear and +authoritative, and kept a dozen or more stout fellows pretty busy. Once +an elderly man in a high silk hat passed through the yard on his way to +its little office. He stopped, and he and Johnny's father had some talk +together. "Yes, sir!" said Johnny's father, with considerable emphasis +and momentum. I enjoyed his "Yes, sir!" It was pleasant to find him so +hearty and so well-mannered. He seemed to have escaped from something +and to be glad of it. The man in the high hat hardly tried to stand up +against him. As he turned away he smiled in a curious fashion; and I +thought I heard him say to himself, as he moved back toward the door of +the shed that had the sign "Office" on it: "I wonder whether I'm going +to run him, or whether he's going to run me?" + +Johnny was all eyes for a tall stack of lathing in bundles and for a +pile of sacks filled with hair from cows' hides, which last was to go +into plaster. Raymond looked at these objects of interest--and at +several others--with some degree of abstractedness. The English +cathedrals, as I was told later, had not been plastered. Raymond had +already developed some faculty for entertaining a concept freed from +clogging and qualifying detail; and this faculty grew as he grew. He +liked his ideal _net_; facts, practical facts, never had much charm for +him. I remember his once saying, when about twenty-three, that he should +have liked to be an architect, but that plumbing and speaking-tubes had +turned him away. If he could have drawn facades and stopped there, I +think he might have been quite happy and successful in the profession. + +Johnny pulled a lath for each of us out of one of the bundles, and we +used them in our tour of the yard as alpenstocks. We found a glacier in +the shape of a mortar bed and were using the laths to sound its depths, +when Johnny's father appeared from round the corner of a lumber pile. He +clapped his hands with a loud report. + +"Here! that won't do!" he said; and none of us thought it remotely +possible to withstand him. "Enough for one morning," he added, and he +waved both arms with a broad scoop to motion us toward the street gate. + +"Oh, father, now!" began Johnny (with no smile at all), conscious of his +position as host. + +"No more, to-day," said his father. "School six days a week would be +about my idea." + +Raymond said nothing, but drew up his mouth to one side and himself led +us toward the street. + + +VII + +I would not seem to stress either the saliency or the significance of +these incidents. I simply put them down, after many years, just as they +return to my memory. Memory is sporadic; memory is capricious; memory is +inconsequent, sometimes forgetting the large thing to record the little. +And memory may again prove itself all these, and more, if I attempt to +rescue from the past a children's party. + +It was my young sister who "gave" it, as our expression was; parents in +the background, providing the funds and engineering the mechanism, were +not allowed greatly to count. The party was given for my sister's +visitor, a little girl from some small interior town whose name (whether +child's or town's) I have long since forgotten. Raymond was invited, of +course;--"though he isn't very nice to us," as my sister ruefully +observed; and some prompting toward fair play (as I vaguely termed it to +myself) made me suggest Johnny McComas. He came. + +There must have been some twenty-five of us--all that our small house +would hold. There were more games than dances; and the games were +largely "kissing" games: "post-office," "clap-in, clap-out," "drop the +handkerchief," and such-like innocent infantilities. Some of us thought +ourselves too old for this sort of thing, and would willingly have left +it to the younger children; but the eager lady from next door, who was +"helping," insisted that we all take part. This is the place for the +Gertrudes and the Adeles, and they were there in good measure, be-bowed +and be-sashed and fluttering about (or romping about) flushed and happy. +And this would be pre-eminently the place for Elsie, Jehiel's +granddaughter and Raymond's cousin. Elsie would naturally be, in the +general scheme, my childhood sweetheart; later, my fiancee; and +ultimately my wife. Such a relationship would help me, of course, to +keep tab more easily on Raymond during the long course of his life. For +instance, at this very party I see her doing a polka with Johnny +McComas, while Raymond (who had been sent to dancing-school, but had +steadfastly refused to "learn") views Johnny with a mixture of envy and +contempt. A year or two later, I see Elsie seated in the twilight at the +head of her grandfather's grandiose front steps, surrounded by boys of +seventeen or eighteen, while Raymond, sent on some errand to his +grandfather's house, picks his way through the crowd to say to himself, +censoriously, in the vestibule: "Well, if I can't talk any better at +that age than they do...!" Yes, Elsie would undeniably have been an +aid; but she never existed, and we must dispense with her for once and +for all. + +Raymond could always make himself difficult, and he usually did so at +parties. To be difficult was to be choice, and to be choice was to be +desirable. Therefore he got more of the kisses than he might have got +otherwise--many more, in fact, than he cared for. But on this occasion a +good part of his talent for making himself difficult was reserved until +refreshment time. Most of the boys and girls had paired instinctively to +make a prompt raid on the dining-room table, with Johnny McComas +unabashedly to the fore; but Raymond lingered behind. My mother +presently found him moping alone in the parlor, where he was looking +with an over-emphatic care at the pictures. + +"Why, Raymond dear! Why aren't you out with the others? Don't you want +anything to eat?" + +No; Raymond didn't want anything. + +"But you do--of course you do. Come." + +Then Raymond, thus urged and escorted,--and, above all, +individualized,--allowed himself to be led out to the refreshments; and, +to do him justice, he ate as much and as happily as any one else. Johnny +McComas, with his mouth full, and with Gertrudes and Adeles all around +him, welcomed him with the high sign of jovial _camaraderie_. + +Yes, Johnny took his full share of the ice-cream and macaroons; he got +his full quota of letters from the "post-office"; the handkerchief was +dropped behind him every third or fourth time, and he always caught the +attentive little girl who was whisking away--if he wanted to. He even +took a manful part in the dancing. + +"What a good schottische!" exclaimed one of the Adeles, as the +industrious lady from next door, after a final bang, withdrew her hands +from the keyboard. "And how well you dance!" + +"Gee!" exclaimed Johnny, with his most open-faced smile; "is that what +you call it--a schottische? I never tried it before in my life!" + +"Learn by doing"--such might have been the motto of the town in those +early, untutored days. And Johnny McComas emphatically made this motto +his own. + + + + +PART II + +I + + +Raymond went into the bank; not in due course, but rather more than a +year later. After seeing some of his more advanced schoolfellows depart +for Eastern colleges, after indulging a year of desultory study at home, +and after passing a summer and autumn among the Wisconsin lakes, he was +formally claimed by Finance. There was no Franciscan ardor to clasp her +close, as others have clasped Poverty and Obedience. He began his +business career, as men have been recommended to begin their matrimonial +career, with a slight aversion. However, his aversion never brought him +any future good. + +His year at home, so far as I could make out, was taken up largely with +aesthetics and music. He read the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" and they +lighted him along a road that led far, far from the constructional +practicalities of the yard where we had spent a Saturday forenoon, some +five years before. He had begun to collect books on the brickwork of +Piacenza and Cremona, and these too led him farther along the general +path of aestheticism. During our years at the Academy the town, after an +unprecedentedly thorough sweep by fire, had been rebuilding itself; and +on more than one Saturday forenoon of that period we had tramped +together through the devastated district, rejoicing in the restorative +activities on every hand and honestly admiring the fantasies and +ingenuities of the "architects" of the day. But Raymond had now emerged +from that innocent stage; summoning forth from some interior reservoir +of taste an inspirational code of his own, he condemned these crudities +and aberrations as severely as they probably deserved, and cultivated a +confident belief that somewhere or other he was to find things which +should square better with his likings and should respond more kindly to +his mounting sensibilities. + +"Not going to cut us?" I once asked. "Just as we're picking up, too?" + +But Raymond looked abstractedly into the distance and undertook no +definite reply. Possibly he had responded to Ruskin; more probably to +some divine young sense of truth and fitness such as forms the natural +endowment, by no means uncommon, of right-minded youth. Or it may be +that he had simply reached the "critical" age, when Idealism calls the +Daily Practicalities to its bar and delivers its harsh, imperious +judgments; when it puts the world, if but for a few brief months, "where +it belongs." His natural tendency toward generalization helped him +here--helped, perhaps, too much. He passed judgment not only on his +parents, whom he had been finding very unsatisfactory, and on most of +his associates (myself, for example, whenever I happened to speak an +appreciative word for his essentially admirable father), but on the +community as such. A filmy visitant from Elsewhere had grazed his +forehead and whispered in his ear that the town allotted to him by +destiny was crude, alike in its deficiencies and in its affirmations, +and that complete satisfaction for him lay altogether in another and +riper quarter. + +Perhaps it was some such discontent as this that led him in the +direction of musical composition--or toward attempts at it. He had no +adequate preparation for it, nor, so far as I could perceive, any +justificatory call. He had once taken a few terms on the piano; and he +had on his shelves a few elementary works on harmony; and he had in his +fingertips a certain limited knack for improvisation; and he had once +sketched out, rather haltingly, a few simple songs. Yet, all the same, +another reservoir, one of uncertain depth and capacity, was opening up +for him at an age when opening-up was the continuing and dominating +feature of one's days--a muse was stirring the vibrant air about him; +and I gathered, after two or three certain visits to his house, that he +had embarked on some composition or other of an ambitious and +comprehensive nature: a cantata, possibly, or even some higher flight. +As he had never domesticated musical theory and musical notation in his +brain, most of his composing had to be carried on at the keyboard +itself. The big piano in the big open drawing-room resounded with his +strumming experiments in melody and harmony--sounds intelligible, often +enough, to no ears but his own, and not always agreeable to them. I am +sure he tried his parents' patience cruelly. His reiterated phrases and +harmonizings were audible throughout a good part of the house. They did +nothing toward relieving his mother's headaches, nothing toward raising +his father's hopes that, pretty soon, he would come to grips with the +elements of Loans and Discounts. Even the servants, setting the table, +now and again closed the dining-room door. + +"Oh, Raymond, Raymond; _not_ to-day!" his mother would sometimes plead. + +I presume that, during this period, the diary was still going on; and no +one with such a gift for writing will stop short at a diary. In fact, +Raymond tried his hand at a few short stories--still another muse was +fluttering about his temples. Most of these stories came back; but a few +of them got printed obscurely in mangled form, and the failure of the +venturesome periodicals sometimes deprived him of the honorarium (as +pay was then pompously called) which would have given the last +convincing touch to his claims on authorship. He spoke of these stories +freely enough to me, but disclaimed all attempts at poetry: short of +that field, I believe, he really did stay his hand. + +Well, perhaps too many good fairies--good only to the pitch of +velleity--buzzed and brushed, like muses, or pseudo-muses, about his +brows. All this unsettled him--and sometimes annoyed his daily +associates. But how, without these instinctive young passes at Art, +could the unceasing, glamorous and needful rebirth of the world get +itself accomplished? + + +II + +As for Johnny McComas, he found one year of our Academy enough. It was +the getting in, not the staying in, that provoked his young powers. Our +school, moreover, was explicitly classical in a day when the old +classical ideal still ruled respected everywhere; and Johnny, much as he +liked being with us and of us, could not see the world in terms of +Latin paradigms. He wanted to be "doing something"; he wanted to be "in +business." During the summer following his year at Dr. Grant's I heard +of him as somebody's office-boy somewhere downtown, and then quite lost +sight of him for the five years that succeeded. + +It occurred to me that Johnny must be doing just the right thing for +himself; he would make the sort of office-boy that "business men" would +contend for: easy to imagine the manoeuvres, even the feuds, that +would enliven business blocks in the downtown district for the +possession of Johnny's confident smile and dashing, forthright way. I +learned, in due season, that Johnny had cast in his lot with a +real-estate operator, and had been cherished, through periods harried by +competition, as a pearl of price. + +The city was emphatically still in the "real-estate" stage. Anybody +arriving without profession or training straightway began to sell lots. +Nothing lay more openly abundant than land; the town had but to +propagate itself automatically over the wide prairies. The wild flowers +waved only to welcome the surveyor's gang; and new home-seekers--in the +jargon of the trade--were ever hurrying to rasp themselves upon the +ragged edges of the outskirts. + +One Sunday morning in May, Raymond and I determined on an excursion to +the country--or, at all events, to some of the remoter suburbs. The bank +would not claim his thoughts for twenty-four hours, nor the law-school +mine. We left the train at a promising point and prepared to scuffle +over a half-mile splotched with vervain and yarrow, yet to bloom, toward +a long, thin range of trees that seemed to mark the course of some small +stream. But between us and that possible stream there soon developed +much besides the sprinkling of prairie flowers. We began to notice +rough-ploughed strips of land that seemed to mean streets for some new +subdivision; piles of lumber, here and there, which should serve to +realize the ideals of the "home-seekers"; and presently a gay, +improvised little shack with a disproportionate sign to blazon the +hopes and ambitions of a well-known firm back in town. And in the +doorway of the shack stood Johnny McComas. + +He was as ruddy as ever, and his blue eyes were a bit sharper. He was +slightly heavier than either of us, but no taller. He knew us as quickly +as we knew him. For some reason he did not seem particularly glad to see +us. He made the reason clear at once. + +"They had me out here last Sunday," he said, looking about his chaotic +domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here +next Sunday--somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued +darkly. It was a threat, we felt--a threat that would make some +presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch +in Dellwood Park, where there _is_ something; not out here, beyond the +last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and +abilities were temporarily going to waste. + +But having put himself right in his own eyes and in ours, he began to +give rein to his fundamental good nature. Emerging from the cloud that +was just now darkening his merits and his future, he asked, interestedly +enough, what we ourselves were doing. + +I had to confess that I was still a student. Raymond mentioned briefly +and reluctantly the bank. It was nothing to him that he, no less than +Johnny, was now a man on a salary. + +"Bank, eh?" said Johnny. "That's good. We're thinking of starting a bank +next year at our Dellwood branch. It's far enough in, and it's far +enough out. Plenty of good little businesses all around there. And I'm +going to make them let me have a hand in managing it." + +This warm ray of hope from the immediate future quite illumined Johnny. +He told us genially about the prospects of the venture in the midst of +which he was encamped, and ended by feigning us as a young bridal couple +that had come out to look for a "home." + +"There may be one or two along pretty soon, if the day holds fair; so I +might as well keep myself in practice." Then he jocularly let himself +loose on transportation, and part payments down, and street +improvements "in," and healthful country air for young children. He was +very fluent and somewhat cynical, and turned the seamy side of his trade +a little too clearly to view. + +He explained how the spring had been exceptionally wet in that +region,--"which, after all, _is_ low," he acknowledged,--and how his +firm, by digging a few trenches in well-considered directions, had +drained all its standing water to adjoining acres still lower, the +property of a prospective rival. Recalling this smart trick made Johnny +think better of the people who would maroon him for a succession of +Sundays, and he became more genially communicative still. + +"That gray streak off to the west--if you can see it--is our water +drying up. Better be drying there than here. You can put a solid foot on +every yard of our ground to-day. Come along with me and I'll show you +your cottage--_domus, a, um_. Not quite right? Well, no great matter." + +He pointed toward a yellow pile of two-by-fours, siding, and shingles. +"Be sure you make your last payment before you find yourselves warped +out of shape." + +We followed. Johnny seemed much more expert and worldly-wise than either +of us. We held our innocent excursion in abeyance and bowed with a +certain embarrassed awe to Johnny's demonstration of his aptitude for +taking the world as it was and to his light-handed, care-free way of +handling so serious a matter, to most men, as the founding of a home. As +we continued our jaunt, I began to feel that I now liked Johnny a little +less than I could have wished. + + +III + +At about this time Raymond and I found ourselves members of a little +circle that expressed itself chiefly through choral music. It was almost +a neighborhood circle, and almost a self-made circle--it gradually +evolved itself, with no special guidance or intention, until, finally, +there it was. I, at that period, may have felt that it would verge on +the presumptuous to pick and choose--to attempt consciously the +fabrication of a social environment--and so I adopted with docility the +one which presented itself. Raymond, on the other hand, may have felt +that even the best which was available was unlikely to be good enough +and have accepted fatalistically anything which could possibly be made +to do. + +Just why our little group of a dozen or so should have united on a +musical basis and have expressed itself in a weekly "sing" I might find +it hard to explain. None of us fellows was especially blessed with a +voice; and the various Gertrudes and Adeles that met with us were +assuredly without any marked sanction to vocalize. Possibly the "sing" +was the mere outcome of youthful exuberance and of the tendency of young +and eager molecules to crystallize into what came, later, to be termed a +"bunch." + +As for Raymond himself, he never sang at all. "Oh, come, Rayme; join +in!" the other fellows would suggest--and suggest in vain. + +"I'm doing _my_ part," he would return, giving the piano-stool a nearer +hitch to the keyboard. + +In fact, it was his specific function to preside at the Chickering, the +Weber, the Steinway, according to the facilities offered by the +particular home--for we moved about in rotation. This service, which we +presently came to consider sufficient in itself, dispensed him from +exhibiting his nature in so articulate a thing as actual vocal +utterance. This he was quite opposed to: he would never even try a hymn +in church. But he could accompany; he could improvise; he could +modulate; he could transpose any simple air. The ease and readiness with +which he did all this made less obvious--indeed, almost +imperceptible--his fundamental unwillingness to abandon himself before +others (especially if members of his own circle) to any manifestation +that might be taxed with even a remote emotionalism. And yet, at that +very time, he was laying the foundations of a claim to be that broad and +vague thing called an "artist." Even as early as this, apparently, he +was troubled by two contradictory impulses: he wanted to be an artist +and give himself out; and he wanted to be a gentleman and hold himself +in. An entangling, ruinous paradox. + +This comment on Raymond's musical inclinations and musical services may +require a bit of shading: I believe that, after all, he never quite +cared for music unless he had, in all literalness, his "hand" in it. He +never liked to hear any one else play the piano, still less the violin; +concerts of all sorts were likely to bore him; and he never really rose +to an understanding of the more recondite and elaborate musical forms: +to have his fingers on the keyboard--especially when improvising in a +secure inarticulateness--was his great desideratum. + +In our little group we ran from seventeen to nineteen; some of us just +finishing high school, others just on the edge of college, others (like +myself) engaged in professional studies, and still others making a debut +in business as clerks. We sang mostly the innocent old songs, American +or English, of an earlier day, and sometimes the decorous numbers from +the self-respecting operetta recently established in London. No +contributions from a new and dubious foreign element had yet come to +cheapen our taste, to disturb our nervous systems, or to throw upon the +negro, the Hawaiian, or the Argentine the onus of a crass passion that +one was more desirous of expressing than of acknowledging. No; there was +assuredly no excess of emotional life--whether good or bad--in the body +of music we favored. Perhaps what our little circle really desired was +simply good-fellowship and a high degree of harmonious clamor. Certainly +all our doings, whether on Friday evening, or on the other forenoons, +afternoons, and evenings of the week, were quite devoid of an +embarrassing sex-consciousness. We "trained together," as the expression +went--all the fellows and all the Gertrudes and Adeles--with no sense of +_malaise_, and postponing, or setting aside, in the miraculous American +fashion, all sexual considerations whatsoever. + +I hardly know just why I should have thought that Johnny McComas could +be introduced successfully into this circle. Johnny, as he had told us +in his suburb, had cut loose from his parents. He was now living on his +own, in a neighborhood not far from ours--from his, as it had once been. +One evening I ventured to bring him round. He developed an obstreperous +baritone--it was the same voice, now more specifically in action, that I +had first heard on the devastated prairie; and he made himself rather +preponderant, whether he happened to know the song or not. + +"Why, you're quite an addition!" commented one of the girls, in +surprise--almost in consternation. + +"He is, indeed,--if he doesn't drown us all out!" muttered one of the +fellows, behind his back. + +Yes, Johnny was vociferous--so long as the singing went on. But he +developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in +one of our Adeles--a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he +showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay +window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite +please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys +who were yet to make their "start," overlooking the fact that Raymond +was in the bank, and ignorant of the further fact that one of our +fellows was just beginning to be a salesman in a bond house. Johnny +became violently communicative about the attractions of Dellwood Park +and seemed to want to figure demonstratively in the eyes of Gertrude and +Adele as an up-and-coming paladin of the business world. To most of us +he seemed too self-assertive, too self-assured. He knew too clearly what +he wanted, and showed it too clearly. Indeed it became apparent to me +that while a boy of twelve may be accepted easily (at least in an early, +simple society), a youth of eighteen cannot altogether escape the issues +of caste. It was borne in on me presently that Johnny might as well have +remained away. In fact-- + +"We shan't need him again," said the brother of the soprano to me, as +the evening broke up. + +And Raymond himself remarked to me a day later:-- + +"Don't push him; he'll get along without your help." + + +IV + +While the rankness of new elements in a new era had not penetrated our +homes, it had begun to make itself manifest in public places. The town, +within sixty years, had risen from a population of nearly _nil_ to a +population of some five or six hundred thousand; and it was only in due +course, perhaps, that "vice" now raised its head and that a "criminal +class" came into effective, unabashed functioning. It was to be many +years before the better elements learned how to combine for an efficient +opposition to impudent evils. A heterogeneous populace, newly arrived, +was still willing to elect mayors of native blood; but one of these, +elected and reelected to the town's lasting harm, might as well have +been of the newer, and wholly exterior, tradition: a genial, +loose-lipped demagogue who saw an opportunity to weld the miscellany of +discrepant elements into a compact engine for the furtherance of his own +coarse ambitions, and who allowed his supporters such a measure of +license as was needed to make their support continuing. A shameless new +quarter suddenly obtruded itself with an ugly emphasis; unclassifiables, +male and female, began to assert and disport themselves more daringly +than dreamt of heretofore; and many good citizens who would crowd the +town forward to a population of a million and to a status undeniably +metropolitan came to stroll these tawdry, noisy new streets with a +curiosity of mind at once disturbed, titillated, and somehow gratified. +Said some: "This is a new thing; do we quite like it?" Said others: "The +town is certainly moving ahead; we don't know but that we do." + +Yes, a good many social observers set forth to see for themselves the +new phenomena and to appraise the value of them in the coming political +and social life of the community. Of course, many of these observers +were too young and heedless to draw inferences from the sudden flood of +new bars and bright lights and crass tunes and youthful creatures in +short skirts who seemed not quite to know whether their proper element +was the stage above or the range of tables below; in fact, these +observers waived all attempt at speculative thought and became +participants. + +Raymond and I had heard comments on the new developments from our +elders; we were not without our own curiosity (though we had enough +fastidiousness not to graze things very close, still less to wade into +them very deep), and we decided one evening that we would look into two +or three of these new and notable places of public entertainment. + +The first of them offered little. The second of them developed Johnny +McComas. He sat at a table, talking too familiarly, or at least too +forbearingly, with a rubicund, hard-faced man in shirt-sleeves standing +at his elbow--probably the head of the place, or his first aide; and he +was buying obviously unnecessary glasses of things for two of the young +creatures in short skirts--Gertrudes and Adeles of that particular +stratum, or Katies and Maggies, if preferred. Johnny sat there happy +enough: an early example of the young business warrior diverting himself +after the fray. Years afterward the scene came back to me when I met +with a showy painting in the resonant new lobby of one of the greater +hotels. It showed a terrace overlooking some placid Greek sea; the happy +warrior standing ungirt and uncasqued, with a beautiful maiden of +indeterminate status seated beside him; a graceful attendant holding a +wreath above each happy and prosperous head, and a group of sandaled +dancing-girls lightly footing it for the pleasure of the fortunate pair; +the whole scene illuminated by the supreme, smiling self-satisfaction of +the relaxed soldier amid the pipings of peace. So Johnny; he had earned +the money and won the right to spend it in pleasure; his, too, the duty +of refreshing himself for the strenuous morrow. + +He saw us and nodded. "Life!"--that was what he seemed to say. He made a +feint to interest us in his companions; but they were poor things, as we +knew, and as he must have known too. He left them without much regret +and without much ceremony, and took us on to the next place. + +"It's life, isn't it?" he said in so many words. + +Raymond's nose went up disdainfully. "Life!" Some such manifestations, +if properly handled and framed, might be life in Paris, perhaps; but he +could not accept them as life here at home, within a mile or two of his +own study. What this evening offered him seemed to require a +considerable touch of refining before it could reach acceptance. It was +all only an imperfectly specious substitute for life, only a coarse +parody on life. The town, he told me the next day, made him think of a +pumpkin: it was big and sudden and coarse-textured. "I've had enough of +it," he added; "I want something different, and something a lot better." + +Johnny, as I say, took us to the next place; we might not have known how +to take ourselves there. Johnny honestly liked the glare, the noise, the +uproarious music, and the human press both on the sidewalks and in the +packed, panting interiors. I liked it all, too,--for once in a way; but +I soon saw that, for Raymond, even once in a way was once too often. In +this last place a girl with a hand too familiarly laid on his arm gave +the finishing touch; it was a coarse, dingy little hand, with some +tawdry rings. Raymond never liked close quarters; neither in those days, +nor ever after, did he care to come decisively to grips with actual +life. "Keep off!" was what his look said to the offender. The poor, +puzzled little debutante quickly stepped back, and we all regained the +street. Raymond was trembling with embarrassment and vexation. + +"Why, you were making a hit," said Johnny. + +"Let's get home," said Raymond to me, ignoring Johnny. "This is enough, +and more than enough. What a hole this town is coming to be!" + + +V + +Raymond stayed on at the bank, though--if one might judge by his words +and actions--with no enthusiasm in the present and no hopefulness for +the future. He did what he had to do, and did it fairly well; but there +was no sign that he was looking forward, and there remained scant +likelihood that he would meet the expectations of his father and +grandfather by mastering the business. On the contrary, I think he +actually set his face against it: he seemed as resolute not to learn +banking as he had been resolute not to learn dancing. Professor Baltique +and the little girls in light-soled shoes and bright-colored sashes had +given him up in the waltz; and it looked as if James B. Prince must +presently renounce all hope of his ever learning how to turn the +collective spare cash of many depositors to profit. I recall the day +when the chief little light of the dancing-class, after some moments of +completely static tramplings by Raymond in the midst of the floor, +suddenly began to pout and to frown, and then left him in the midst of +the dance and of the company and came to tears before she could reach an +elder sister by the side wall. Raymond accepted the incident without +comment. If his demeanor expressed anything, it expressed his +satisfaction at carrying a point. + +But he did not wait until a vexed and disappointed bank left him high +and dry. Though he must have known that many young clerks in the office +envied him his billet and that many young fellows outside it would have +been glad to get in on any terms whatever, he never gave a sign that he +valued his opportunity; and when he finally pulled out it was with no +regard to any possible successor. + +The younger men in the bank were a rather trim lot, and were expected to +be. They did wonders, in the way of dressing, on their sixty or +seventy-five dollars a month. Raymond's own dressing, for some little +time past, had grown somewhat slack and careless. I did him the +injustice of supposing that he felt himself to be himself, and _hors +concours_ so far as the general body of clerklings was concerned; but he +had other reasons. + +He had given up buying books and periodicals; no new volumes to be seen +in his room except works of travel (preferably guide-books) and grammars +and dictionaries of foreign languages. For all such works of general +uplift and inspiration as the intending tourist in Europe might expect +to profit by, he depended on circulating libraries or the shelves of +friends. I myself lent him a book of travels in the Dolomites, and +scarcely know, now, whether I did well or ill. Raymond, in short, was +silently, doggedly saving, with the intention of taking a trip--or of +making a sojourn--abroad. + +The cleavage came in James Prince's front parlor, one Sunday afternoon, +and I happened to be present. A very few words sufficed. Raymond's +father had picked up a thick little book from the centre-table, the only +book in the room, and was looking back and forth between this work--an +Italian dictionary--and Raymond himself. + +"What do you expect to get out of this?" he asked. + +"I expect to learn some Italian," Raymond replied. + +"Wouldn't French be more useful?" + +"I know all the French I need." + +"Where do you expect to use your Italian?" + +"In Italy. I didn't go to college." + +Impossible to depict the quality of Raymond's tone in speaking these +five words. There was no color, no emphasis, no seeming presentation of +a case. It was the cool, level statement of a fact; nor did he try to +make the fact too pertinent, too cogent. An hour-long oration would not +have been more effective. He had calmly taken off a lid and had +permitted a look within. His father saw--saw that whatever Raymond, by +plus or by minus, might be, he was no longer a boy. + +"I know," said James Prince, slowly. He was looking past us both and was +opening and shutting the covers of the book unconsciously. + +A day or two later, Raymond gave me the rest. His father had asked him +how much money he had. Out of his sixty or seventy-five a month Raymond +had set aside several hundreds; "and I said I could make the rest by +corresponding for some newspaper," he continued. This was in the simple +day when travel-letters from Europe were still printed and read in the +newspapers, and even "remunerated" by editors. Incredible, perhaps, in +this day; yet true for that. + +His father had asked him how long he intended to be away. Raymond was +non-committal. He might travel for a year, or he might try "living" there +for a while--a long while. A matter of funds and of luck, it seemed. His +father, without pressing him closely, offered to double whatever sum he +had saved up. He appeared neither pleased nor displeased by Raymond's +course. He felt I suppose, that the bank would hardly suffer, and that +Raymond (whom he did not understand) might get some profit. Fathers have +their own opinions of sons, which opinions range, I dare say, all the +way from charitableness to desperation. In the case of my own son, I am +glad to say, a very slight degree of charitableness was all the tax laid +upon me. There were some distressing months of angularity, both in +physique and in manners, at seventeen; then a quick and miraculous +escape into trimness and grace. And my grandson, now at nine, promises +to be, I am glad to state, even more of a success and a pleasure. As for +Raymond, he had developed unevenly: his growth had gone athwart. +Possibly the "world," that vast, vague entity of which his father's +knowledge was restricted almost to one narrow field, might aid in +straightening the boy out. + +"Well, try it for a year," his father said, not unkindly, and almost +wistfully. + + +VI + +When Johnny McComas heard of Raymond's resolve, he drew up his round +face into a grimace. He thought the step queer, and he said so. But, +"Oh, well, if a fellow can afford it!" he added. And he did not explain +just what meaning he attached to the word "afford." + +But Johnny could see no valid reason for a fellow's giving the town the +go-by at nineteen and at just that stage of the town's development. +Johnny was so made that the community which housed him was necessarily +the centre of the cosmos; he himself, howsoever placed, was necessarily +at the centre of the circle--so why leave the central dot for some vague +situation on the circumference? And take this particular town: what a +present! what a future! what a wide extension over the limitless prairie +with every passing month!--a prairie which merely needed to be cut up +into small checkers and sold to hopeful newcomers; a prairie which +produced profits as freely as it produced goldenrod and asters; a +prairie upon which home-seekers might settle down under agents whose +wide range, running from helpful cooeperation to absolute flimflam, need +leave no competent "operator" other than rich. + +"What are you going to get out of it?" asked Johnny earnestly. + +Raymond attempted no set reply. Johnny, he recognized, was out for +positive results, for tangible returns; his idea was to get on in the +world by definite and unmistakable stages. Raymond never welcomed the +idea of "getting on"--not at least in the sense in which his own day and +place used the expression. To do so was but to acknowledge some early +inferiority. Raymond was not conscious of any inferiority to be +overcome. Johnny might, of course, on this particular point, feel as he +chose. + +About this time old Jehiel Prince began to come more frequently to his +son's house. He was yellower and grayer, and he was getting testy and +irascible. He sometimes brought his lawyer with him, and the pair made +James Prince an active participant in their concerns. However, Jehiel +was perhaps less unhappy here than in his own home. When there, he sat +moodily alone, of evenings, in his basement office; and Raymond, who was +sometimes sent over with documents or with messages, impatiently +reported him to me as "glum." + +"Poor old fellow! he doesn't know how to live!" said Raymond in +complacent pity. He himself, of course, had but to assemble all the +bright-hued elements that awaited him a few months ahead to make his own +life a poem, a song. + +"I can do that," he once said, in a moment when exaltation had briefly +made him confidential. + +Raymond never saw his grandmother--at least he never cared to see her. +Here, if nowhere else, he was willing to take a cue, and he took it from +the head of the family. He thought that so many years of town life might +have made her a little less rustic in the end: the York State of 1835 or +of 1840 need not have remained York State so immitigably. And if there +was a domestic blight on the house he was willing to believe that she +was two thirds to blame: behind the old soul was a pack of poor +relations. Particularly a brother-in-law--a bilious, cadaverous fellow, +whom I saw once, and once was enough. He had been an itinerant preacher +farther East, and he lived in a woeful little cottage along one of +Jehiel's horse-car routes. His mournful-eyed wife was always asking +help. He too had "gone into real-estate," and unsuccessfully. He was the +dull reverse of that victorious obverse upon which Johnny McComas was +beginning to shine. + +Another of her relatives, a niece, had married a small-town sharper. He +had brought her to the larger town, and his sharpness had taken on a +keener edge. He, too, had gone into real-estate--a lean, wiry little +man, incredibly arid and energetic, and carrying a preposterously large +mustache. There was trouble with him after Jehiel's death. It developed +that one of the documents which old Beulah Prince had been cajoled or +hectored into signing had deeded to him--temporarily and for a specific +purpose--some forty acres of purple and yellow prairie flowers, +delightful blossoms nodding and swaying in the wind, and that he had +refused to deed more than half of them back: his services at that +particular juncture were "worth something," he said. Well, life (as may +have been remarked previously) would be quite tolerable without one's +relatives. Meanwhile the summer flowers bloomed and nodded on, under the +windy blue sky, all unaware of their disgrace. + +A month after Raymond's decision, flowers (of the sort favored in +cemeteries) were trying to bloom over old Jehiel. Some stroke, some +lesion, had put a period to the unhappy career of this grim old man. +Raymond set to one side, for a few weeks, his new trunk and portmanteau; +for a few weeks only--he had no notion of making, ultimately, any great +change in his plans. It was obvious that James Prince was looking +forward to a year or two of harassing procedure in the courts, for old +Jehiel's estate was unlikely to smooth out with celerity; but Raymond +was clearly of no use at home, even as a mere source of sympathy. A +fortnight after his grandfather's funeral he was off. + +The singing-class would have given him good-bye in a special session; +but his eyes were now on brighter matters and the vocalizing Gertrudes +and Adeles were dim. He got out of it. Besides, the affair might come to +involve something like ceremony; and he was always desirous of avoiding +(save in the arts) the ceremonial side of life. When he came back from +his first sojourn on the Continent he was a young man of mark, as things +went in our particular town and time; or, rather, he might have been +such, had he but chosen. The family fortunes were then merely at the +stage of worry and still far from that of impending disaster. Raymond +came back with money, position, and a certain aureole of personal +distinction--just the sort of young man who would be asked to act as +usher at a wedding. He _was_ asked repeatedly; but he never acted, and +his excuses and subterfuges for avoiding such a service almost became +one of the comedies of the day. He had no relish for seeing himself +walking ceremonially up a church aisle under the eyes of hundreds, and +I knew better than to ask him to walk up any aisle for me. He never did +the thing but once, and that was under the inescapable compulsion of his +fiancee--who, for her part, insisted on eyes and plenty of them. A man +may never cease to be astonished at the workings of feminine preferences +on such an occasion, but can hardly escape accommodating himself to +them. Gertrudes are Gertrudes. + +But the wedding is years ahead, while the departure for Europe is +imminent. Raymond had a tepid, awkward parting with his mother, whose +headaches would not allow her to go to the train; and he shook hands +rather coldly and constrainedly with his father, who would have +welcomed, as I guess, some slight show of filial warmth, and he threw an +embarrassedly facetious word to me about the weight of his portmanteau, +and so was off. And it was years, rather than months, before he came +back. + + + + +PART III + +I + + +While Raymond was taking his course abroad, Johnny McComas was shaping +his course at home. A colorless, unbiased statement--as it was meant to +be; one which, despite the slight difference between "taking" and +"shaping," has no slant and displays no animus. Colorless, yes; too +colorless, perhaps you will object. If so, I will reword the matter. +While Raymond, then, was in Europe cultivating his gentler faculties, +Johnny remained in America, strengthening certain specific powers. Or, +again: while Raymond was preparing, or so he thought, for a desirably +decorative place in the "world" (the world at large), Johnny was +qualifying himself, as he felt sure, for an important and remunerative +position in that particular section of the world to which he had decided +to confine his endeavors. And if you ask me, after I have colored a +colorless statement, to bias an unbiased one, I shall refuse. I am not +taking sides. Each of them was following his own likings--not the worst +of rules for a growing and avid organism. + +Raymond wrote, of course,--it was impossible that he should not; and I +think I showed one or two of his early letters to Johnny. Johnny was not +exactly interested; vistas were opened for which he had no eyes and +which possessed no appositeness to his own aims. + +"Still over there, eh?" he asked, on my producing a second letter. +"These are the years that count," he added. He was probably implying +that the final score would make a better showing for the man who spent +those years in his native and proper environment. + +He disregarded the general drift of the letters, but hit upon one or two +novel expressions, and repeated them, half-quizzical, half-intrigue. + +"Still over there," I echoed. A developing nature, I felt, must reach +out for whatever it needs; and, in simpler form, I said so. + +"Well, I'm no misfit," he rejoined briefly. To "feel at home" at +home--that, I presume, was the advantage he was asserting. + +Johnny, "at home," was not long in outgrowing the opportunities of +Dellwood Park. Though he did not make, quite yet, the central district, +a year or two later found him in an older and more important suburb--one +that had passed the first acuteness of speculation and had pretty well +settled down to a regulated life. It was not a suburb of the first rank, +nor even perhaps of the second; but it suited his tastes and his present +purposes. The new business combined banking and real-estate, and the +banking department even maintained a small safety-deposit vault. There +was also some insurance; and a little of mortgage-broking. Johnny was a +highly prized element in this business and was pleased from the start +with the outlook. + +"A fellow," he said, "can pick up more experience out there in a month +than he could in one of these big downtown offices in a year." + +Nearly two years passed before I was to see him in his new environment. +There came up a bit of business for a suburban client of mine which +could as well be settled at Johnny's place as at another. It needed no +more than a glance to perceive that Johnny was the dominant factor of +the little institution. His was the biggest roller-top seen through a +maze of gilt letters on a vast sheet of plate glass by commuters turning +the corner morning and evening. His, too, chiefly, the deference of +clerks and office-boy. He was ruddy and robust, and seemed likely to +impose himself anywhere, when the time came. Thus far, a small Forum, +perhaps; but he was the Caesar in it. He did not disdain to attend to my +affair himself; he even showed an emphatic, if not ponderous, +_bonhomie_. + +Just as I was getting up to leave, a man of forty-five or more, with the +general aspect of a contractor's foreman, put in his head. It was +Johnny's father. + +"I guess you know George Waite," Johnny said to him; "and I guess he +knows you." + +We shook hands, under Johnny's direction, and said that he was right. +His father's hand--rough and with a broken nail or two--was that of a +superintendent who on occasion helped with a plank or a mortarboard. He +had an open face and a pleasant manner; he was not at all the dominant +personage I remembered meeting in that "yard," years ago. Johnny, it +seemed, was putting up a row of small houses on the suburb's edge, and +his father was supervising the job. Johnny was pretty direct in saying +what he wanted done, or not done, in connection with this work; and if +his father made a suggestion it was as likely as not to be overruled. He +was only one of the senators in Johnny's little curia, and probably far +from the most important of them. + +Johnny's father got away, after all, before I did. Johnny asked me to +stay for a little, and there was not much for a young professional man +to do after catching the 4.52 into town. We sat for a while talking of +indifferent matters. Johnny, surrounded by his own prosperity, asked +with a show of interest, and without condescension, about my progress in +the law, and I was replying with the cautious vagueness of one whose +practice is not yet all he hopes it will be. During this time I had +noticed, through the maze of gilt lettering, a limousine standing just +round the corner. Its curtains were drawn: "an odd circumstance," I had +commented inwardly. All of a sudden the street-door of the bank burst +open, and three masked men, brandishing revolvers, rushed in. + +"You cover the cashier!" cried one; "we'll take care of the vault!" + +Johnny McComas flung open a drawer, seized a revolver of his own, sprang +to his feet-- + +Pardon me, dear reader. The simple fact is, I have suddenly been struck +by my lack of drama. You see how awkwardly I provide it, when I try. +What bank robbers, I ask you, would undertake such an adventure at +half-past four in the afternoon? I cannot compete with the films. As a +matter of fact, the vault stood locked, the tellers were gone, even the +office-boy had stolen away, and Johnny and I were left alone together, +exchanging rather feebly, and with increasing feebleness, some faint and +unimportant boyhood reminiscences.... I feel abysmally abashed; let us +open a new section. + + +II + +As I have said, Raymond wrote. He wrote, for example, with a voluminous +duteousness, to his parents. His letters to them, so far as they came to +my notice, were curious; probably he meant that they should be saved and +should become a sort of journal of his travels. They were almost +completely impersonal. There was plenty of straight description; but +beyond some slight indications of his own movements, past or intended, +there was no narration. He never mentioned people he met; he never +described his adventures--if he had any. He seemed to be saying to +Europe, as Rastignac said to Paris, "_A nous deux, maintenant!_" He was +at grips with the Old World, and that sufficed. + +His letters to me, however, were not devoid of personal reactions. These +commonly took an aesthetic turn. An early letter from Rome had a good +deal to say about the Baroque. He met it everywhere; it was an +abomination; it tried his soul. Fontana and Maderna, the Gog and Magog +of architecture, had flanked the portals of art and had let through a +hideous throng of artificialities and corruptions.... The word "Baroque" +was new to me, and I looked it up. I learned that it described, not a +current movement, as I had supposed, but an influence which had +exhausted itself nearly three hundred years ago. But it was still recent +and real to Raymond. And I learned, further, that this style had modern +champions who could say a good word for it. In any event, it might be +accepted calmly as a valuable and characteristic link in the general +historic chain. + +In another letter he was ecstatic over the Gothic brickwork of Cremona. +It was so beautiful, he said in as many words, that it made his heart +ache; not often did Raymond let himself go like that. Eager to follow +his track--and to understand, if possible, his heart, however peculiar +and baffling--I looked up, in turn, North Italian brickwork. This was +twice three hundred years old. But it had stirred other modern hearts +than Raymond's; for an English aesthete had tried (and almost succeeded) +to impose it on his country as a living mode. "Very well," I said; +"Italian brickwork may reasonably be accepted as a modern interest." + +Raymond, before descending to Italy, had spent some months in Paris. +Circumstances had enabled him to frequent a few studios, and his first +letter to me from that city had been rather technical and "viewy." +Incidentally, he had seen something of the students, and had found +little to approve, either in their manners or their morals. He left +Paris without reporting any moral infractions of his own and settled +down for some stay in Florence. He was studying the language further, he +reported: a language, he said, which was easy to begin, but hard to +continue--the longer you studied the less you really knew. However, he +knew enough for daily practical purposes. His _pension_ was pleasant; +small, and the few visitors were mostly English. + +But there were one or two Americans in the house, and they came home a +few months later with their account of Raymond and his ways. It was +needed; for the three or four letters that he had printed in one of our +newspapers contained little beyond descriptions of set sights--to think +we should have continued to welcome that sort of thing so long! Well, +these people reported him as conscientiously busy, for his hour each +day, with grammar and dictionary. He was also getting his hand in +painting; and he had "taken on" musical composition, even to +instrumentation. "Too many irons!" commented my lively young informant. +"And I think I should get my painting in Paris and my music in Germany." +She also said that Raymond had next to no social life--he showed hardly +the slightest desire to make acquaintances. + +"An old Frenchman came to the place for a few days," she continued; "and +as he was leaving he said your friend was living in an ivory tower--the +windows few, the door narrow, and the key thrown away. 'Ivory tower'--do +you understand what that means?" + +"No," I said. But of course I understand now. + + +III + +As a consequence of my call at Johnny McComas's office (or as a probable +consequence), I received, some six months later, an invitation to his +wedding. You will expect to hear that I was present, and perhaps acted +as usher, or even as best man. Nothing of the sort was the case, +however; I was absent at the time in the East. Nor are you to imagine me +as continually following, at close range, the vicissitudes, major and +minor, which made up his life, or made up Raymond's. An exact, perpetual +attendance of fifty years is completely out of the question. Don't +expect it. + +Johnny married, I was told, a young woman living in his own suburb, the +daughter of a manufacturer of some means. I met him about two months +after his great step. He was still full of the new life, and full of the +new wife. + +"She's fine!" he declared. "Not too fine, but fine enough for me." + +He cocked his hat to one side. + +"Do you know, I talk to her just as I would to a man." + +"Johnny!" I began, almost gasping. + +"Well, what's wrong? Ever said anything much out of the way to you? Ever +heard me say anything to any other fellow?" + +"Why, no...." I was obliged to acknowledge. + +"Then why the row? It's all easy as an old shoe. _She_ likes it." + +"I know. But--talking with a woman ... It isn't quite like...." + +"Don't make any mistake. Just have the big things right, and they'll +overlook lots of the little ones." + +"H'm," I said doubtfully. "I supposed it was just the other way. Lay a +lot of stress on certain little things, and larger shortcomings won't +bother them. Bring her a bunch of flowers to-day, and she'll help you +deed away the house and lot to-morrow." + +"Fudge!" said Johnny. "I mean the really big things. There's only two. +Ground to stand on and air to breathe." + +"That is to say...?" + +"A platform under her feet and an atmosphere about her. Well, she's got +me to stand on and to surround her. She understands it. She likes it. +Nothing else matters much." + +"Ah!" said I. + +"I'm her bedrock, and I'm her--How do they say it? I'm her--envelopment, +as those painting fellows put it." + +"See here, Johnny," I protested; "Don't get anachronistic. We are only +in 1884. That expression won't reach America for ten or fifteen years. +Have some regard for dates." + +"It won't? Wasn't it in your friend's letter?" + +"What friend?" + +"Why, Prince; when he was in Paris. Didn't you read it to me?" + +I remembered. + +"Do you know," he went on, "I've been straight as a string--ever since. +And I'm going to keep so." + +"I should hope so, indeed." + +"Whatever I may have been before. But I think it's better for a young +fellow to dash in and find out than to keep standing on the edge and +just wonder." + +"Well, I don't know, Johnny," I returned soberly. "I'm going to be +married myself, next month. And I expect to go to my bride just as +pure--" + +"No preaching," said Johnny. "The slate's wiped clean. Adele's all right +for me, and I'm all right to her." + +He adjusted his hat, making the two sides of the brim level. + +"We're going to move shortly," he stated. "The business can go on where +it is, for a while, but we're going to live somewhere else." + +Perhaps in the city itself, it appeared; perhaps in some suburb toward +the north. But no longer in one to the west. Johnny was developing some +such scent for social values and some such feeling for impending +topographical changes as had begun to stir the great houses that were +grouped about the Princes. + +"So you're the next one?" he said presently. "It's the only life. Good +luck to you. And who's going to see you through? Prince?" + +"Yes--'my friend.' I'm glad you remember him." + +"Oh yes; I can remember him when I try. But I don't try very hard or +very often. Back in this country?" + +"He is." + +"What's he doing?" Johnny fixed his hard blue eyes firmly on me. + +I was sorry to have no very definite answer. "He has been in the East +lately. He'll be back here in time for me." + +"Well," said Johnny darkly; and that was all. + + +IV + +Raymond's "tower" was not static, but peripatetic. Early in his second +summer abroad it was standing among the Dutch windmills for a brief +season; and when he learned that I was to have a short vacation in +England--the only quarter of the Old World I ever cared for--he left it +altogether for a fortnight and came across from Flushing to see me. + +Two points immediately made themselves clear. Firstly, he was viewing +the world through literature--through works of fiction in some cases, +through guide-books in more. Everything was a spectacle, with himself +quite outside as an onlooker; and nothing was a spectacle until it had +been ranged and appraised in print. Secondly, if he was outside of +things, America was still farther outside; it existed as a remote +province not yet drawn into the activities and interests of the "world." +He seemed willing, even anxious, to make himself secondary, subordinate. +However he may have been on the Continent, here in England his desire to +conform made him appear subservient and almost abject. My own unabashed +and unconscious Americanism--the possible consequence of +inexperience--sometimes embarrassed him, and he occasionally undertook +to edit my dealings with members of the older half of our race, even +with waiters and cabmen. As for the more boastful, aggressive, +self-assertive sort of Americanism, _that_ would make him tremble with +anger and blush for shame. + +I will say this in his behalf, however: he did not like England and was +not at home there. + +"The little differences," he observed, one day, "made more trouble than +the big ones. A minor seventh is all right, while a minor second is +distressing. I am happier among the Latins." + +Yet I am sure that even among his Latins he took the purely objective +view and valued their objects of interest according as they were starred +and double-starred, or left unmarked in the comparative neglect of small +print. + +We saw together Canterbury and Cambridge and Brighton and a few other +approved places. Through all these he walked with a meticulous +circumspection, wondering what people thought, asking inwardly if he +were squaring with their ideas of what conduct should be. Only once did +I find him fully competent and sufficiently assertive. The incident +occurred on a late afternoon, in a small side street just off the +Strand, while I was casting about for one of those letter-pillars. +Raymond was approached, as was proper to the locality and the time of +day, by a young woman of thirty who had a hard, determined face and who +was clothed on with a rustling black dress that jingled with jet. I was +near enough to hear. + +"Good-afternoon," she said. + +"Good-afternoon." + +"Where," with marked expressiveness, "are you going?" + +"I'm going to stand right here." + +"Give me a drink." + +"Couldn't think of it." + +"Stand," she said, with sudden viciousness, "stand and rot!" + +Raymond, after an instant's surprise, made a response in his unstudied +vernacular. "Yes, _I'll_ stand; but you skip. Shoo!" + +She was preparing some retort, but he waved both his hands, wide out, as +if starting a ruffled, vindictive hen across a highway. At the same time +he caught sight of a constable on the corner, and let her see that he +saw-- + +"Constable!"--why, I am as bad as Raymond himself: I mean, of course, +policeman. + +But the London police are sometimes chary in the exercise of their +functions. What really started the woman on her way was his next brief +remark, accompanied by the hands, as before, though with a more decided +shade of propulsion. + +"Scoot!" She went, without words. + +These were the only American observations I heard from Raymond during +that fortnight. + +I wish he had been as successful on the night of our arrival in London +when we encountered, in the court behind the big gilded grille of the +Grand Metropole, the porter of that grandiose establishment. We had come +together from Harwich and did not reach this hotel until half an hour +before midnight. We had had our things put on the pavement and had +dismissed the cab, and the porter, with an airy, tentative insolence, +now reported the place full. + +"_I_ don't know who ordered your luggage down, sir; _I_ didn't," he said +with a smile that was an experiment in disrespect. + +Raymond looked as if he were for immediately adjusting himself to +this--though I could hardly imagine his ever having done the like in +Paris or in Florence. He was quite willing to confess himself in the +wrong: yes, he ought to have remembered that the "season" was beginning; +he ought to have known that this particular season, though young, had +set in with uncommon vigor; he ought to have known that all the hotels, +even the largest, were likely to be crowded and have sent on a wire. The +porter, emboldened by the departure of the cab, and by my companion's +contrite silence, began to embroider the theme. + +Now a single week in England had taught me that no two men in that +country--the home of political but not of social democracy--are likely +to talk long on even terms. One man must almost necessarily take the +upper hand and leave to the other the lower, and the relation must be +reached early. I resolved on the upper--cab or no cab. I glared--as well +and as coldly as I could. The fellow was only a year or so older than I. + +"You are too chatty," I said. "Fewer words and more action. If you are +full, call somebody to take us and our baggage to some hotel near by +that is not full." + +The fellow sobered down and gave us his first look resembling respect. + +"Very good, sir. I will, sir. Thank you, sir,"--though he had nothing to +thank me for, and though he well knew there was to be nothing. + +Raymond looked at me as one looks at a friend who surprises by the +sudden disclosure of some unexpected talent or power. + +"But you said 'baggage,'" he commented. + +"Indeed I did," said I. + + +V + +Our new hotel, we discovered next morning, was duplicated in name by +another, four doors down the street. During the day we heard the reason +for this. A domestic difficulty had overtaken husband and wife and the +two had separated, each keeping an interest in the serviceable name and +a frontage on the familiar street. We were in the husband's hotel, under +the very discreet ministrations of the young woman who had caused the +break. "Do you quite like this?" Raymond had asked me. But he became +reassured on seeing in the guest-book the names of two or three +well-known and sufficiently respected compatriots. By the next day he +was able to cast on Miss Brough, as she flitted (still discreetly) +through her functions, the eye of a qualified idealization. I am sure he +would never have viewed indulgently any such situation at home. But the +poor, patient, cautious girl helped him toward realizing the +sophistications and corruptions of European society, and so he welcomed +her. But I believe he avoided speaking to her. She may have been hurt, +or she may have been amused; or neither. Yet, after all, this +_contretemps_ was for him, I felt, but a prosaic substitute for +something richer. A similar situation in Naples, say, taken at close +range, might have quickened his interest considerably. + +Next day there was something different for him to report. He had gone +into a courtyard off Holborn, drawn by the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Four +or five little girls were dancing, and some older women stood looking +on. For a few moments he looked on too, probably with an effect of aloof +and amused patronage. But patronage was not for that court. + +Presently one of the younger women, who wore a hat full of messy plumes +and carried a small fish in each hand by the tail, stepped up and +invited him to trip a measure with her. "Trip a measure"--it has a fine +Elizabethan or Jacobean sound, whether she used the precise expression +or not. But Raymond demurred; at first politely; later, perhaps not so +politely. But he was whisked into the dance and made to take several +turns. He was so embarrassed that he called it all an "adventure." +Possibly it was meant for a lesson in manners. + +Thus Raymond in England. As he said, he liked the Continent better. I +hope he showed to better advantage there, and I should have liked to see +him there--to be with him there. For he rather put a brake on any +measure of exuberance and momentum which I might have brought to +England with me, and I could only trust that his strait-jacket was +partly unlaced among the French and Italians. I think that likely, for +with them he was, of course, an acknowledged and unmistakable foreigner. +But my fortnight with him was cramped and uncomfortable; and when we +parted at the American Exchange--I for Liverpool and he for Calais--I +confess I had a slight feeling of relief. I felt, too, that my conduct, +however native and unstudied, had pleased the Island quite as well as +his. + +At the Exchange itself he never read American newspapers--least of all, +one from his own town. I believe, too, he avoided them on the Continent. +Living a very special life, he meant to keep himself integral, +uncontaminate. And behind us both was the other world, his own, all +vital and astir. + +Yes, I am aware that my prose is pedestrian, and that Europe--as it once +was, to us--deserves a brighter and higher note. I will attempt, just +here, a purple patch. + +Europe, then,--the beacon, hope, and cynosure of our fresh, ingenuous +youth--the glamorous realm afar which drew to itself from across the sea +our eager artist-bands, pilgrims to the Old, the Stately, and the Fair; +Europe, which reared above our dull horizon the towers of Oxford and of +Notre Dame, sent up into our pale, empty sky the shimmering mirage of +Venice, and cast across our workaday way the grave and noble shadow of +Rome; Europe, which gave out through the varying voices of Correggio, +Canova, Hugo, and Wagner the cry, so lofty and so piercing-sweet, of +Art; Europe, which with titles and insignia and social grandeurs, once +dazzled and bemused our inexperienced senses ... and so on. + +Easy! + +But worth while? + +I shall not attempt to decide. + +To-day Europe seems not all we once found it; and we, on the other hand, +have come to be more than some of us at least once figured ourselves. We +are beginning to have glamours and importances of our own. + + +VI + +Raymond lingered on for a year or more in Italy, and came home, as I +have implied, in time for my wedding. He found his native city more +uncouth and unkempt than ever. Such it was, absolutely; and such it was, +relatively, after his years under a more careful and self-respecting +regime. The population was still advancing by leaps and bounds, and +hopeful spirits had formed a One-Million Club. A few others, even more +ardent, said that the population was already a million, or close upon +it, and busied themselves to start a Two-Million Club. They had their +eyes wide open to the advantage of numbers, and tightly closed to the +palpable fact that the community was unable properly to house and +administer the numbers it already had. The city seemed to cry: "I need a +friendly monitor--one who will point me out the decencies and compel me +to adopt them." The demagogue who had ruled and misruled before had been +reelected once or twice, and the newspapers were still indulging their +familiar strain of irresponsible and ineffective criticism. The dark +world behind him had become more populous and bold, and the forces for +good still seemed unable to organize and cooeperate toward making +betterment an actuality. But new people were always flocking in--people +from the farms, villages and country-towns of the Middle region--and +bringing with them the uncontaminated rustic ideals of rightness and +decorum: a clean stream pouring into a turbid pool, and the time was to +come when it would make itself felt. Meanwhile, the city remained--to +Raymond--a gross, sharp village, one full of folk who, whether from the +Middle West or from Middle Europe, had never come within ten leagues of +gentility, and who, one and all, were absorbedly and unabashedly bent on +the object which had suddenly assembled them at this one favored +spot--the pushing of their individual fortunes. A hauptstadt-to-be, +perhaps; but, so far, an immensely inchoate and repellent miscellany. + +Raymond's father gave him a sober welcome. His mother attempted a brief, +spasmodic display of affection; but it was too much, and only a maid +and her pillows saw her for the next few days. His father seemed older, +much older; tired, careworn, worried. The trouble of settling old +Jehiel's estate had been all that could have been expected, and more. +There were claims, complications, lawsuits, what not; and through all +this maze James Prince had to put up with the inherited help of the dry, +dismal old fellow whom I had seen in earlier days at the house. I had +come, now, to a better professional knowledge of him. He was a man of +probity, and of some ability, but a deliberate; impossible to hurry, and +not easy, as it seemed, even to interest. Under him matters dragged +dully through the courts, and others' nerves were worn to shreds. I +remember how surprised I was one day on hearing that he had picked up +enough resolution to die. + +Raymond did not much concern himself about his father's burdens. He +assumed, I suppose, that such taxes on a man's brain and general +vitality were proper enough to middle age and to the business life of a +large city. However, he was living--just as he had principally lived +abroad--on his father's bounty. His contributions to the press--whether +a daily, or, of late, a monthly--brought in no significant sums; and a +bequest of some size from his grandfather was slow in finding its way +into his hands. + +As I have said, Raymond might have taken an advantageous position in +home society. He made no effort, and I sometimes caught myself wondering +if his attitude might be that there was "nobody here." He might have +joined his father's club; but the older men principally played billiards +and talked their business affairs between. However, he did not care for +billiards, nor had their affairs any affinity with his. A younger +set--noisy and assertive out of proportion to its numbers--gave him no +consolation, still less anything like edification. They were _au +premier plan_; they possessed no background; they were without +atmosphere--without envelopment, as Johnny McComas might have amended it +(though no such lack would have been noted or resented by Johnny +himself). _Bref_, he knew what they all were without going to see. And +as for "society," it rustled flimsily, like tissue-paper; bright, in a +way, but still thin and crackling. + +I wonder how he found such society as attended my wedding. I shall not +describe it; I did not describe Johnny's--probably the more important +event of the two for the purposes of this calm narrative. Yet, if you +will permit me, I shall touch on two points. + +I wish, first, to say that, in my ears and to my eyes, the name "Elsie" +is just as dear and charming as it ever was. Perhaps, at one period of +my courtship, I wondered if the name would wear. No name more delightful +and suitable for a gay, arch, sweet young girl of twenty; but how, I +asked myself, will the name sit on a woman of forty, or on one of sixty? +Well, I will confess that, at forty, a certain strain of incongruity +appeared; but it marvelously vanished during the following score of +years, and the name now seems utterly right for the dainty figure and +gentle face of my lifelong companion. And though our eldest daughter is +unmarried and thirty-five, we have never regretted passing on this +beautiful name to her. + +My second point must deal with Raymond's attitude toward me on my +wedding-day and on the days preceding it. He was stiff, constrained, +dissatisfied--merely courteous toward my Elsie, and not at all cordial +to me. I wondered whether he blamed me for thus bringing him back home; +but the real reason, as I came to understand later, was quite different. +He regarded the marriage of a friend as a personal deprivation, and the +bride as the chief figure in the conspiracy. After my defection, or +misappropriation, he solaced himself by trying to make one or two other +friendships. When these friends married in turn, like process produced +like results. These men, however, he threw overboard completely; in my +case, he showed, after a while, some relenting, and ultimately even +forgiveness. By the time he came to marry on his own account, the last +of his very few bachelor friends had "gone off"; so there was no chance +of inflicting on anybody that displeasure which others had several +times inflicted on him. + +He sent Elsie a suitable present, and stood beside me through the +ceremony as graciously as he was able. + +"I wish you both great joy," he said firmly, at the end; and it was six +weeks before we saw him in our little home. + + + + +PART IV + +I + + +Johnny McComas was still carrying on his business life and his home life +in the suburb where he had married, when I came, finally, to make my +first call on the domestic group of which he was the nub. Still in the +future was the day when he was to move into town, and to have also a +summer home on the North Shore, and to make some of his father-in-law's +spare funds yield profitable results, and to arouse among wistful clerks +and unsuccessful "operators" an admiring wonder as the youngest +bank-president in the "Loop." + +I looked in on him one evening in late November. I found a house too +emphatically furnished and a wife too concerned about making an +impression. I did not consider myself a young man of prime consequence +and did not relish the expenditure of so much effort: after all, +Johnny's standing, Johnny's wife, Johnny's domestic _entourage_ were +not before a judgment-bar. It was plain to see that for Mrs. John W. +McComas complete social comfort had not yet been reached, and I wondered +if the next move might not show it as farther away than ever. + +Johnny himself was bluff and direct, and took things as a matter of +course. Much had been done, but more remained to be done; meanwhile all +was well and good. After a little, his wife was content to leave us +alone together, and we drifted to Johnny's "den"--a word new at that +time, and descriptive of the only feature of his home on which he laid +the slightest self-conscious emphasis. + +I had heard that there were twins--boys; and soon, as the evening was +still young, I heard the twins themselves. They had reached the age of +ten months, and consequently had developed wants, but no articulate +means for making those wants known. Therefore they howled, and they +began howling in unison now. Perhaps it was for them that a foresighted +mother had left us alone together. + +"Great little hollerers!" said Johnny placidly, pulling at his pipe. + +I was still a bachelor. "Might shut the door?" I proposed. + +"If you like," said Johnny, without enthusiasm. "They wake me every +morning at five," he added. + +Yes, I was still a bachelor--and probably a tactless, even a brutal, +one. + +"Might move them to another bedroom, farther away?" I suggested. The +house seemed big enough for such an arrangement. + +"Don't want to," declared Johnny. He began pulling at his pipe again, +and there was a little silence during which I might meditate on the curt +nobility of his remark. + +The fact was, of course, that Johnny loved life; he embraced it with +gusto, with both arms outspread. No sidestepping its advances; no +dodging its sharp angles; no feeble mitigating of a situation for which +he was himself responsible; no paltry deadening of domestic uproar +merely because he himself happened to be within the domestic +environment. "If Adele stands it, I will too--they're mine as well as +hers,"--such I conceive to have been his attitude. Johnny had no nerves, +and only a minimum of sensibility. The sound-waves broke on his +sensorium as ripples break on a granite coast. Perhaps they pleased him; +perhaps they even soothed him. Why, bless you! these children were +_his_! They were facts as great and as unescapable as the ebb and flow +of the tides, as dawn and twilight, as the morning and evening stars. +And the evening stars were singing together. Great may have been the +jubilation for Johnny's ears, boundless the content in Johnny's heart. + +I really think that Johnny felt through the din some of the exhilaration +that often came to him with a good brisk scrap in his office--or in the +other man's office. In fact, home and business were Johnny's two sources +of interest and pleasure--the warp and woof of his life--and he was +determined on getting the utmost out of each. His interest in his home +circle may somewhat have declined--or at least have moderated--with +advancing years, but it was incandescent now. His interest in the +outside world--that oyster-bin awaiting his knife--never slackened, not +even when the futility of piling up the empty shells became +daylight-clear, and when higher things strove perseveringly, even +unmistakably, to beckon him on. Never, in fact, throughout his life did +he exhibit more than two essential concerns: one for his family and +clan; and one for the great outside mass of mediocre individuals through +whose ineptitudes he justly expected to profit. + +Well, the door of the den remained open, and our talk went on to the +rising and falling of infant voices. At last, thinking that my good-bye +must be to Johnny only, I rose to go. You might reasonably ask for a +clearer impression of his home and a more definite account of his wife. +But what can I say when the primary address was so disconcertingly to +the ear? Of his wife--who came down, during a lull, at the last +moment--I can only say that she seemed too _empressee_ at the beginning +and too casual at the end. Perhaps she had decided that, after all, I +was no more than I myself claimed to be. Perhaps the infant hurricane +was still ruffling the surface of her mind, or even disturbing its +depths. + +"I won't ask you to call again," she said, as we shook hands for a +good-night: "we shall be moving in the spring." She spoke with a +satisfied air of self-recognized _finesse_, and as in the confident hope +of completing very promptly some well-planned little programme; but-- + +"Visit us there," said Johnny, with a quick cordiality which prevented +his wife from redeeming herself. + +"There" had been the chief topic in the den. Many neighborhoods had been +brought forward, with their attendant advantages and disadvantages. +Johnny told me what he thought, and let me say what I thought. When I +listened, it was as a man who might soon have a similar problem to +consider. When I spoke it was to utter banalities sedately; any +neighborhood might do, I said, that had good air; yes, and good +schools--looking toward the future. And any house, I felt, would serve, +if it had a nursery that was sealed, sound proof, remote.... + +"Well, best luck in your search for your roof-tree," I said earnestly to +them both. + +"'Roof-tree'!" echoed Johnny. And, in fact, my observation did seem +rather artificial and insincere. + + +II + +By the time Raymond reached home, Johnny McComas had turned his informal +suburban enterprise into a "state" bank, with his father-in-law as +president and himself as cashier. The father-in-law lent his name and +furnished most of the capital; Johnny himself provided the driving +power. And by the time Raymond had become, through his father's death, +the head of the family and the controller of the family funds, Johnny +had turned his state bank into a national bank, with its offices in the +city and with himself as president; and he had bought--at a bargain--a +satisfactory house on the edge of the neighborhood where we first met +him. The street was marked for business advance more promptly and more +unmistakably than the precise quarter of the Princes. It would do as a +home for a few years. The transaction appealed both to McComas's thrift +and his pride. The coming of his new little bank, with its modest +capital, made no particular stir in the "street"; and the great group of +houses to the eastward were so apprehensive of open outrage, in one form +or another, that his approach, in a guise still social, provoked but +scant concern. + +James Prince died when Raymond was about thirty. A careful, plodding man +who had never brought any direct difficulties upon himself, but who had +been worried--and worried out--through troubles left him by others. On +the whole, he had found life an unrewarding thing; and he passed along, +at fifty-five, with no great regrets. The tangle of family affairs had +finally been straightened out in considerable measure, though Raymond +found enough detail still left to make him realize what a five years his +father had passed through; and when, the year following, his mother +died, with the settlement of her estate almost overlapping the +settlement of his father's, he acquired a new sense of the grinding, +taxing possibilities of business. I speak from his own viewpoint; he was +susceptible--unduly, abnormally so--to the grind and the tax. After a +few months of clammy old Brand and his methods, he suddenly cut loose +from him (without waiting for him to die, as he did a little later); and +he told me that I was the man to wind up these tedious affairs. They +were not nearly so difficult and complicated as they seemed to him--they +were now largely routine matters, in fact; and I hope I carried things +along at a tempo which satisfied him. This is not to deny that Raymond +seemed to have days when he found even me dilatory and exasperating; but +old Brand would probably have driven him mad. + +Well, the prospects of his estate were not too brilliant. The lawsuits +had been expensive and sometimes unsuccessful; the bank had passed a +dividend, and the old houses, which had meant a lot of money in their +day, meant less now and even loss in a near future. The time was fast +coming when this circumscribed and unprotected neighborhood was to +admit other--and prejudicial--interests: boarding-houses, of course; and +refined homes for inebriates; and correspondence-schools for engineers; +and one of the Prince houses became eventually the seat of a +publishing-firm which needed a little distinction more than it needed a +wide spread of glass close to the sidewalk. + +Whatever the state of Raymond's fortunes, it was easy to see that they +were not likely to improve in his hands. He detested business, both _en +gros_ and _en detail_. Despite his ancestry, he seemed to have been born +with no faculty for money-making, and he never tried to make up his +deficiency. It was all of a piece with the stone-throwing of his boyhood +days--he never attempted to improve himself: it was enough to follow the +gifts with which he had been natively endowed. Precept, example, +opportunity--all these went for naught. To the end of his days he viewed +the American "business man" as a portentous and inexplicable +phenomenon--one to be regarded with distaste and wonder. He persisted +in thinking of the type as a juvenile one--an energetic and clever boy, +who was immensely active and immensely productive of results (in an +immensely limited field), but who was incapable of anything like an +_apercu_ or a _Weltanschauung_ (oh, he had plenty of words for it!), and +who was essentially booked to lose much more than he gained. He disliked +"offices" and abominated "hours." I think that even my own modest +professional applications sometimes became a puzzle to him.... + +And here I stand--convicted of having perpetrated another section +without one short paragraph and without a single line of conversation. +Let me hasten to bring Raymond to my suite and my desk-side, and make +him speak. + +He came down one morning, as administrator of his mother's estate, to +consider the appraisal of the personal property--many familiar items, +and some discouraging ones. + +"Do you _have_ to do this?" he asked me, with the paper in his hand. "Do +you _like_ to do it?" + +"The world's work," I rejoined temperately. "It's got to be done." + +"H'm!" he returned. "The world's a varied place. And its work is varied +too. This blessed town must be taught that." + +Was he girding himself to be one of its teachers? + +From that time on I resolved to take him patiently and good-humoredly: a +friend must bear a friend's infirmities. + + +III + +I did not know, with precision, what phases of the world's work were +engaging Raymond's attention. I suppose he was adventuring, rather +vaguely, among the "liberal arts," though he probably saw, by this time, +that a full professional exercise of any of them was beyond his reach. +He was heard of as writing short essays and reviews for one or two +genteel publications, as making water-color tours through the none too +alluring suburbs, as composing minor pieces for a little musical society +which he had joined and which he wished to advance, and so on. +Acquaintances reported him at architectural exhibits and at +book-auctions--occasions neither numerous nor important. He lived on +alone in his father's house--expensively; too expensively, of course, +for it was an exacting place to keep up. + +He was coming to be known in a small circle--but an influential one--as +a young man of wealth, culture, and good-will. But his wealth was less +than supposed, his culture was self-centred, and his good-will was +neither broad nor zealous. + +However, the new day was coming when he could be turned to account--or +when, at least, people made the attempt. + +This, however, does not mean philanthropy. That was barely dawning as a +social necessity. The few who were supporting charitable institutions +and were working in the recently evolved slums were neither conspicuous +nor fashionable. Nor does it mean political betterment. No efforts had +yet been successful in substituting for the city's executive incubus a +man of worthier type, nor was there yet any effective organization +founded on the assumption--which would have seemed remote and fantastic +indeed--that a city council could be improved. Parlor lectures on civics +were of course still farther in the future. Poor government was simply a +permanent disability, like weather, or lameness, or the fashions; folk +must get along as best they could in spite of it. The town remained a +chaos of maladministration and of non-administration; but when the +decencies are, for the time being, despaired of, one may still try for +the luxuries. So the city girded itself for a great festival; the nation +approved and cooeperated, and a vast congeries of white palaces began to +rise on our far edge. + +The detailed execution of this immense undertaking was largely local, of +course. Though the work was initiated by older heads (some of them were +too old and were dropped), there were places on the innumerable +committees for younger ones--for men in their early thirties; their +vigor, enthusiasm, and even initiative (within understood limits) would +greatly further the cause. There were (among others) committees on +entertainment to engage the services of young men of position, leisure, +and social experience. There were many foreign dignitaries to be +received and guided; there must be lively and presentable youths to help +manoeuvre them. Raymond, who was supposed to have mingled in European +society (instead of having viewed it from afar, in detachment), was +asked to serve in this field. + +There were equally good opportunities for brisk, aggressive young men on +finance committees and such-like bodies, wherein prominent sexagenarians +did the heavily ornamental and allowed good scope for younger men who +had begun to get a record and who wished to confirm ability in +influential eyes. This opened a road for John W. McComas, who made a +record, indeed, in the matter of gathering local subscriptions. He +dented the consciousness of several important men in his own field, and +got praised in the press for his indefatigability and his powers of +persuasion. Before the six months of festivity were half over, our +Johnny had become a "prominent citizen" and his new bank almost a +household word. + +Raymond did less well. The great organization was an executive +hierarchy: ranks and rows of officials, with due heed not only to +cooerdination but to subordination. Some men do their best under such +conditions; others, their worst. Raymond, a strong individualist, a +pronounced egoist, could not "fall in." Even in his simple field--one +concerned chiefly with but the outward flourishes--the big machine irked +and embarrassed him. He withdrew. When an imperial prince was publicly +"received," with ceremonies that mingled old-world formalities (however +lamely followed) and local inspirations (however poorly disciplined), +the moving event went off with no help of his: I believe he even smiled +at it all from a balcony. + +It was here that Raymond began to make clear his true type. He was +Goethe's "bad citizen"--the man who is unable to command and unwilling +to obey. + +After a particularly flamboyant appreciation of McComas's services in a +Sunday newspaper, I ventured to touch on our Johnny's rise in Raymond's +hearing. The two had not met for years; and Johnny had probably no +greater place in Raymond's mind than Raymond, as I remembered once +finding, had in Johnny's. But Raymond did not yet pretend to overlook or +to forget or to ignore him; nor did he yet allow himself to mention +Johnny as a one-time dweller in his father's stable. + +"Why, yes," said Raymond; "he seems to be coming on fast. Climbing like +anything." + +This, I felt, was disapproval, slightly tinctured with contempt. But +there are two kinds of progress on a ladder or a stairway. There is the +climbing up, and there is (as we sometimes let ourselves say) the +climbing down. + +It was at the imperial reception that Raymond and Johnny finally met. +Let us figure Raymond as descending from his satirical balcony, and +Johnny, with his wife, as earnestly working his way up the great +stairway--the _scalone_, as Italy had taught Raymond to call it. This +was an ample affair with an elaborate handrail, whose function was +nullified by potted plants, and with a commodious landing, whose corners +contained many thickset palms. A crowd swarmed up; a crowd swarmed down; +the hundreds were congested among the palms. Johnny, with his wife on +his arm, was robust and hearty, and smiled on things in general as he +fought their way up. He took the occasion as he took any other occasion: +much for granted, but with a certain air of richly belonging and of +worthily fitting in. His wife--"I suppose it was his wife," said +Raymond--was elaborately gowned and in high feather: a successful +delegate of luxury. Obviously an occasion of this sort was precisely +what she had long been waiting for. Despite the press about her, she +made her costume and her carriage tell for all they might. A triumphing +couple, even Raymond was obliged to concede. The acme of team work.... + +"There we were--stuck in the crowd," said Raymond, whose one desire +seemed to have been to gain the street. "Not too close, fortunately. I +had to bow, but I didn't have to speak; and I didn't have to be +'presented.' He gave me quite a nod." + +And no great exercise of imagination was required for me to see how +distant and reserved was Raymond's bow in return. + + +IV + +That autumn, after the festal flags had ceased their flaunting and fire +had made a wide sweep over the white palaces, Raymond suddenly went +abroad. It was to be a stay of three or four months. He first wrote me +from Paris. + +He wrote again in December, also from Paris, and told me _tout court_ +that he was engaged to be married. I give this news to you as suddenly +as he gave it to me. + +You can supply motives as easily as I. His parents were gone and his +family life was _nil_. The old house was large and lonely. You may +believe him influenced, if you like, by his last view of Johnny McComas +and by Johnny's amazing effect of completeness and content. You may +fancy him as visited by compunctions and mortifications due to his +consciousness of his own futility. Or you may fall back upon the simple +and general promptings that are smoothly current in the minds of us all. +My own notion, however, is this: he never would have married at home; +only an insidious whiff of romance, encountered in France or Italy, +could have accomplished his undoing. + +Raymond's own advices were meagre. "Your emotional participation not +particularly desired"--such seemed to be the message that lay invisible +between his few lines. But other correspondents supplied the _lacunae_. +He was to marry a girl whose family formed part of the American colony +in the French capital. At least, the feminine members of the family were +there: the mother, and an elder sister. The father, according to a +custom that still provoked Gallic comment, was elsewhere: he was +following the markets in America. The bride-to-be was between nineteen +and twenty. Raymond himself was thirty-three. + +He advised me, later, that the wedding would take place at the end of +February and requested me to obtain and forward some of the quaint +documents demanded at such a juncture by the French authorities. He +added that he hoped for a honeymoon in Italy, but that his fiancee +favored Biarritz and Pau. + +The wedding came off at one of the American churches in Paris. It was a +sumptuous ceremonial, aided by a bishop (who was on his travels, but who +had not forgotten to bring along his vestments) and by the attendance of +half the colony. Raymond was obliged to put up with all this pomp and +show, much as it ran counter to his tastes and inclinations. But +fortunately he was made even less of than most young men on such an +occasion; he had few connections on either side of the water, so the +bride's connections dominated the day and made her the chief figure +still more completely than is commonly the case. And the honeymoon was +spent, not in the north of Italy, but in the south of France. + +There are times when a young girl must have her way. And there are times +when a young husband (but not so young) will determine to have his. I +knew Raymond. + +The couple were in no haste to get home. The four months ran to almost a +year. I first met the new wife at a reception in the early autumn. + +"Gertrude," said Raymond, "let me present to you my old friend--" H'm! +let me see: what _is_ my name?--Oh, yes: "Gertrude, let me present to +you my old friend, George Waite." + +Can a young bride, dressed in black, and dressed rather simply too, look +almost wicked? Well, this one contrived to. + +The effect was not due to her face, which had an expression of naive +sophistication, or of sophisticated naivete, not at all likely to +mislead the mature; nor to her carriage, which, though slightly +self-conscious, was modest enough, and not a bit too demure. It was due +to her dress, which, after all, was not quite so simple, either in +intention or in execution, as it seemed. It was black, and black only; +and it was trimmed with black jet or spangles or passementerie or +whatever--let some one else find the name. It was cut close, and it was +cut low; too close and too low--she was the young married woman with a +vengeance. It took a tone and bespoke a tradition to which most of us +were as yet strangers, and our initiation into a new and equivocal realm +had been too sudden for our powers of adjustment. It was Paris in its +essence--the thing in itself--and it had all come unedited through the +hands of a mother and a sister who were so rapt or so subservient as to +be incapable of offering opposition to the full pungency of the Parisian +evangel, and of hushing down an emphatic text for acceptance in a more +quiet environment. I can only say that several nice young chaps looked +once and then looked away. Raymond himself was inconvenienced. Nor did +matters mend when, within a week or so, Mrs. Raymond Prince began to +rate the women of her new circle as "homespun." + +Her little hand fell most heavily on these poor aborigines when two or +three members of Raymond's singing-class loyally came to one of her own +receptions. These Adeles and Gertrudes of the earlier day were now wives +and mothers, with the interests proper to such. They had shepherded +babies through croup and diphtheria, and were now seeing husky, +wholesome boys and girls of twelve and thirteen through the primary +schools. When among themselves, they talked of servants and husbands. +They had not married and gone West or East; they had married at home, +and they had stayed at home. They had had too many things on their hands +and minds to catch up much of the recent exoticism stirring about them +here in town, and they were far from able to cope with this recent +importation of exoticism from the Rue de la Paix. + +Raymond came home, one afternoon, in time for the last half-hour of his +wife's last reception. Her dress, on this occasion, was quite as daring, +in its way, as on the other, and original to the point of the bizarre. +One of the early Adeles was leaving, but she stopped for a moment and +attempted speech. She was the particular Adele with the piercing soprano +voice--a voice which had since lowered itself to sing lullabies to three +successive infants. + +"Well, Raymond--" she began hopefully, and stopped. She tried again, but +failed; and she passed on and out with her words unsaid. + +"Well, Raymond--" Yes, I am afraid that that was the impression of more +early friends than one. + + +V + +Raymond had expected, of course, to give his wife her own way at the +beginning--at the very beginning, that is; and he had expected, equally, +to have her make a definite impression on the circle awaiting her. But-- + +Well, he had intended to "take her in hand," and to do it soon. She was +to be formed, or re-formed; she was to be adjusted, both to things in +general and to himself especially. Besides being her husband, he was to +be her kindly elder brother, her monitor, patient but firm; she was to +enter upon a state of tutelage. He was pretty certain to be right in all +his views, opinions and practices; and she, if her views, opinions and +practices were at variance with his, was pretty certain to be in the +wrong. He assumed that, during those few years in Paris, she had learned +it all in one big lesson only. The time had been too short to confirm +all this sudden instruction into a reasoned and assimilated way of life; +by no means had that superficial miscellany been rubbed into the warp +and woof of her being. The Parisian top-dressing would be removed and +the essential subsoil be exposed and tilled.... + +H'm! + +One of the strongest of her early impressions was naturally that of the +house in which she was to live. It was big and roomy; it was detached, +and thus open to light and air. But its elephantine woodwork repelled +her, for she had grown up amid the rococo exuberances of Paris +apartments. The heavy honesty of black-walnut depressed her after the +gilded stucco of her mother's salon. And that huge, portentous +orchestrion took up such an immensity of room! + +I doubt if the neighborhood itself pleased her much better, though it +was homogeneous (in its way), and dignified, and enjoyed an exceptional +measure of quietude. Perhaps it was too quiet, after some years of a +balcony on a boulevard. And it is true that some of the big houses were +vacant, and that some of the families roundabout went away too often and +stayed away too long. An empty house is a dead house, and when doors and +windows are boarded up you may say the dead house is laid out. Things +were sometimes _triste_--the French for final condemnation. The exodus +so long foreshadowed seemed appreciably under way. This Gertrude became +increasingly conscious, as the months went on, that most of the people +she wanted to see and most of the houses she was prompted to frequent +were miles away, and that the flood-tide of business rolled between. + +Of her reaction to the circle in which she first found herself I have +given you one or two indications. It would be easy, as it would be +customary, to give some other of her early social experiences in detail +and her reactions to them; but my interest is frankly in her husband and +in his reactions. It was of him, too, that I saw the most; and I have +never gone greatly into society. + +At the end of a long and possibly somewhat dull winter his wife began to +hint the advantageousness of transferring themselves to that other part +of town. Raymond was not precisely in the position where he cared to pay +high rent for a small house, while a big house was standing empty and +unrealizable. Pouts; frowns.... But nature came to his aid. With a new +young life soon to appear above the horizon, now was no time to shift. +His son should be born in the house in which he ought to be born. A +reasonable view, on the whole; and it prevailed. + +Raymond had said "son," and son it was. The baby was not named Raymond: +his father, however much of an egoist, was not willing to put himself +forward as such so obviously, nor for a period that promised to be +indefinitely long. Nor was the baby called Bartholomew, after his +maternal grandfather in the East: for who cared to inflict such an +old-fashioned, four-syllable name on such a small morsel of flesh? He +entered the battle under the neutral and not over-colorful pennon of +Albert: his mother could thus call him "Bertie," and think, not too +remotely, of her parent on the stock exchange. + +Raymond was not long in discovering, after reaching home, what +sacrifices the new life was to involve. On the Continent, in the midst +of change and stir, these had not foretold themselves. Back in his own +house, his interests--"intellectual interests" he called them--began to +assert themselves in the old way. But he was no longer free to range the +fields of the mind and take shots at the arts as they rose. Least of all +was he to read in the evening. That was to neglect, to affront. However, +the arrival of little Albert--poor tad!--changed the current of his +wife's own interests and helped to place one more rather vital matter +in abeyance. He was to live--for a while, anyway--in his present home; +and he was to pursue--for a while, anyway--some of the accustomed +interests of his bachelor days. He expected that, before long, his wife +would accept his environment and the practices he had always followed +within it. She needed enlightenment on many points. He had already +communicated some of his views on dress, for example; and he had +readjusted her notions on the preparation of salads. He gave her, pretty +constantly, corrective glances through, or over, his eyeglasses,--for +his sight had begun to weaken early, as his father had foreseen,--and he +meant that such glances should count. She required to be edited; well, +the new manuscript was worth his pains, and would be highly creditable +in its revised version. + + +VI + +If one advantage showed forth from a situation that seemed, in general, +not altogether promising, it was this: Raymond, hearing his native town +commented upon unfavorably by his wife,--who was keen and constant in +her criticisms,--began to defend it. It was one thing for the +native-born to pick flaws; it was another when that ungracious work was +attempted by a newcomer. And he meant not only to defend it, but to +remain in it, though his wife had married him partly on the strength of +his European predilections, and largely on the assumption that a good +part of their married life would be spent abroad. He even began to +wonder if he might not join in and help improve things. Like most of his +fellow-townsmen, he regarded the city's participation in the late +national festival as a great step in advance,--the first of many like +steps soon to follow. The day after the Fair was late; but better to be +late than never. Really, there was hope for the Big Black Botch. More +and more he felt inclined to lessen still further its lessening +enormity. After all, this town was the town of his birth: and a +fundamental egoism cried out that it should be more worthy of him. He +recalled a group of American women--Easterners--whom, during his first +trip abroad, he had caught poring over the guest-book of a hotel in +Sorrento. He was the last male arrival in a slow season; he seemed +interesting and promising; evidently they had had hopes. "But," asked +one of them, "how is it you are willing to register openly from such a +town as that?"--and Raymond had felt the sting. "Such nerve, such +bumptiousness!" he said to me in recalling that query some years later. +But he did not add that he had tried to deliver any _riposte_. Instead +he was now to make a belated return at home, where effort most counted. +The years immediately to come were to be full of new openings and +opportunities; in his own way, and under his peculiar handicaps, he was +to try to take some advantage of them. + + + + +PART V + +I + + +Little Albert's babyhood kept his mother a good deal at home--and by +"home" I mean the house in which he had been born. His father's lessened +interest in Europe (and his diminished deference for it) kept his mother +at home completely--and by "home" I now mean the town in which Albert +had been born. Father, mother, and offspring filled the big house as +well as they could--the big, _old_ house as it was sometimes called by +those who cherished a chronology that was purely American; and Albert +was more than a year and a half along in life before his grandmother +came across to see him and to inspect the distant _menage_. She brought +her water-waves and her sharpened critical sense, and went back leaving +the impression that she was artificial and exacting. + +"She missed her Paris," said Raymond, "and her drive in the Bois." + +"H'm!" said I, recalling that the town's recent chief executive had +pronounced us, not many years back, the equal of Paris in civic beauty. + +"We have no Bois, as yet," he added, thoughtfully. "Do you think we ever +shall have one?" + +He was revolving the Bois, not as a definite tract of park land, but as +a social institution. + +"I think," said I, "that we had better be satisfied with developing +according to our own nature and needs." + +"Yes," he returned; "there was the Frenchman at the fox-hunt: 'No band, +no promenade, no nossing.' Well, we must go on our own tack, as soon as +we discover it." + +It need not be imagined that his mother-in-law's look-in of a month made +his wife more contented. She kept on wishing for her new friends in +another quarter, and (more strongly) for the familiar scenes of the +other side. Raymond did not wish the expense involved in either move. +His affairs were now going but tolerably. So far as the bank was +concerned--a bank that had once been almost a "family" institution--his +influence was naught. He was only a stockholder, and a smaller +stockholder than once. His interest, in any sense, was but a brief, +periodical interest in dividends. These were coming with a commendable +regularity still. His rentals came in fairly too; but most of them were +now derived from properties on the edge of the business +district--properties with no special future and likely only to hold +their own however favorable general conditions might continue. Travel? +No. A man travels best in his youth, when he is foot-free, care-free, +fancy-free. Go traveling too late, or once too often, and there is a +difference. The final checking-off of something one has "always meant to +see" may result in the most ashen disappointment of all: even intuition, +without the pains of actual experience, should suffice to warn. Besides, +as Raymond said,-- + +"We've both had a good deal of it. Let's stay at home." + +His wife cast about her. There is a mood in which a deprivation of high +comedy may drive one to low-down farce. To-day people are even going +farther. A worthy stage is dead, they say; and they patronize, somewhat +willfully and contemptuously (or with a loose, slack tolerance that is +worse), the moving pictures. Perhaps it was in some such mood that +Raymond's wife took up with Mrs. Johnny McComas. They were but three +streets apart. Mrs. McComas was lively, energetic, determined to drive +on; and her ability to assimilate rapidly and light-handedly her growing +opulence made it seem by no means a mere vulgar external adornment. She +knew how to move among the remarkable furnishings with which she had +surrounded herself in that old-new house, and how to make the momentum +gained there serve her ends in the world outside. + +"It will be a short life here," her husband had told her on their taking +possession; "then, a quick sale--at a good figure--to some manufacturing +concern, and on we go." + +"If it's to be short, let's make it merry," she had rejoined; and +nothing had been spared that could give liveliness to their stately old +interiors, while those interiors lasted. + +Mrs. Raymond Prince vaguely pronounced their house "amusing." It had, +like Adele McComas herself, a provocative dash which fell in with her +present mood, and it pleased her that its chatelaine was inclined to +dress up to its wayward sofas and hangings. She even went with Mrs. +Johnny on shopping tours and abetted her as her fancies, desires and +expenditures ran riot. It was a mood of irresponsibility--almost of +defiant irresponsibility. + +Now was the nascent day of the country club. Several of these welcome +institutions had lately set themselves up in a modest, tentative way. +Acceptance was complete, and all they had to do was to grow. With one of +these McComas cast his lot. At the start it was a simple enough affair; +but Johnny must have sensed its potentialities and savored its +affinities, its coming congruity with himself. It was to become, +shortly, a club for the suddenly, violently rich, the flushed with +dollars, the congested with prosperity--for newcomers who had met +Success and beaten her at her own game. Stir on all hands, the reek of +sudden felicity in the air. In later years people with access to better +things of similar sort were known to become indignant when asked to +associate themselves with it. "Why should _I_ want to join _that_?" was +the question they put. But it pleased Johnny McComas, both by its +present manifestations and its latent possibilities. It was richly in +unison with his own nature, and I believe he had a ravishing vision of +its magnificent futurities. + +Last year my wife and I were taken to a Sunday afternoon concert out +there. We found a place of towers and arcades, of endless corridors +planted with columns and numberless chairs in numberless varieties, of +fountained courts, of ball-rooms, of concert-halls, of gay apparel and +cool drinks. We heard of fairs, horse-shows, tournaments in golf and +tennis. The restaurant, with its acre of tables, glassed and naperied; +the ranges of telephone booths, all going it together; the cellars, a +vast subterrene, with dusky avenues of lockers, each cluttered with +beverages of individual predilection--though I suppose that, after all, +they were a good deal alike.... + +Well, it was too much for us; and my Elsie, who is essentially the lady, +if woman ever was, came away feeling a little dowdy and a good deal out +of date. + +At that earlier period, however, it was still simple; the germ was +there, but the development of its possibilities had only begun. When +Mrs. McComas invited Mrs. Prince to drive out with her and see some +tennis, Mrs. Prince was quite ready to accept. + +I do not know just what mode of locomotion they employed. It was in the +early days of the automobile and Johnny McComas was one of the first men +in town to have one. I recall, in fact, some of his initial experiences +with it. On a Sunday afternoon I encountered him in one of these still +relatively unstudied contraptions on a frequented driveway. Another man +was sitting beside him patiently. The conveyance was making no progress +at all. Fortunately it had stopped close enough to the curb not to +interfere with the progress of other and more familiar equipages. + +"We're stuck," said Johnny, jovially, as he caught sight of me. "Ran for +three or four miles slick as a whistle--and look at us now!" It +entertained him--a kink in a new toy. And he enjoyed the interest of the +people collected about. + +"You're gummed up, I expect," said I. In those days nobody knew much +about the new creature and its habits, and one man's guess was as good +as another's. Two or three bystanders eyed me deferentially, as a +probable expert. + +"Likely enough," he agreed--and that made me an expert beyond doubt. +"But this will do for to-day. We've been here twenty minutes." + +He had the car pushed to a near-by stable, amidst the mixed emotions of +the little crowd, and next day he had it hauled home. + +"You were right," he said, when I met him out again in it, a week later. +"It _was_ gummed up, so to speak; but it's working like a charm to-day. +Get in and I'll take you a few miles. That other fellow got an awful +grouch." + +It may have been by this machine, or by some more familiar mode of +locomotion, that the two women reached the country club and its tennis +tournament. Gertrude Prince strolled through its grounds and galleries +with the aloof and amused air of one touring through a foreign town--a +town never seen before and likely to be left behind altogether within an +hour or two. It was at once semi-smart and semi-simple. She took it +lightly, even condescendingly; and when Johnny McComas himself appeared +somewhat later and set them down at a little marble table near a +fountain-jet and offered cocktails as a preliminary to a variety of +sandwiches, she decided, after looking about and seeing a few other +ladies with glasses before them on other little marble tables, to +accept. It was a lark in some town of the provinces--Meaux or Melun; +what difference did it make? + +They formed a little group altogether to Johnny's liking. His wife was +dressed dashingly; his wife's guest made a very fair second; he +himself, although he never lifted a racquet, was in the tennis garb of +that day. + +"You both look ripping," he declared with hearty satisfaction. To look +thus, before competing items in the throng, was the object of the place, +the reason for its developing _mise en scene_. + +Johnny himself looked ripping--cool, confident, content, and at the top +of his days. + +"It was amusing...." said Gertrude to me, with an upward inflection, a +week later. + +And she asked me for more about Johnny McComas. + + +II + +If those were days when people began to combine for the pursuit of +pleasure, they were also days when people began to gather at the call of +public duty. If clubs were forming on the borders, other clubs, leagues, +societies were forming nearer the centre--organizations to make +effective the scattered good-will of the well-disposed and to gain some +betterment in the local political life. To initiate and conduct such +movements only a few were needed; but the many were expected to +contribute, if not their zeal and their time, at least their dollars. It +was patriotic righteousness made easy: a man had only to give his fifty +dollars or his five hundred to feel, without further personal exertion, +that he was a good citizen and was forwarding, as all good citizens +should, a worthy cause. This way of doing it fell in wonderfully well +with Raymond's temperament and abilities (or lack of them): the +liberality of his contributions did not remain unknown, and he was +sometimes held up as a favorable specimen of the American citizen. + +Another movement was soon to engage his attention. If the prosperous +were to have their playgrounds beyond the city's outskirts, the less +prosperous should have theirs within the city's limits. The scheme of a +system of small parks and playgrounds quite took Raymond's fancy. It +contained, besides the idea of social amelioration, the even more +grateful idea of municipal beautification. In time, indeed, might not +this same notion, fortified by experience and given a wider +application, end by redeeming the town not merely in spots but in its +entirety?--a saved and graced whole, not only as to its heart, but as to +its liberal and varied borders of water, woodland and prairie. + +"I should be proud of that," said Raymond heartily. The name of such a +city, following one's own name on any hotel-register, would indeed be a +matter for pride. + +He attended several of the early meetings that were designed to get some +such project, in its simpler form, under way. He had friends among +professional men in the arts, and some acquaintances among newly formed +bodies of social workers. He was not slow in perceiving that the way was +likely to be tedious and hard. It called for organization--the +organization of hope, of patience, of hot, untiring zeal, of _finesse_ +against political chicane, of persistence in the face of indifference +and selfishness. "It will take years of organized endeavor," he +confessed. He recognized his own ineffectiveness beyond the narrow pale +of hopeful suggestion, and wished that here too the giving of a +substantial sum--a large penny-in-the-slot--might produce quick and +facile results. + +His wife, it is to be feared, looked upon these activities of his, +however slight, with a lack-lustre eye. She knew nothing of local +problems and local needs. She was conscious of a hortatory manner in +small matters and of indifference, which she almost made neglect, in +matters that appeared to her to be larger. If she asked for a fairer +share in his evenings--he belonged to a literary club, a musical +society, and so on--it was scant consolation to be told that he objected +to some of her own activities and associations. He did not much care, +for example, to have her "run" with the McComases and others of that +type or to have her dawdle over glasses, tall, broad, or short, in +places of general democratic assemblage; and he told her so. I believe +it was about here that she began to find him something of a prig and a +doctrinaire; and she was not incapable, under provocation, of mentioning +her impressions. It was about here, I suspect, that he told her +something of Johnny McComas and his origins--at least he once or twice +spoke of Johnny with a certain sharp scorn to me. He assuredly spoke of +other country clubs on the other side of town which were more desirable +for her and equally accessible, save in the material sense of mere +miles. Though he took no interest in athletics, nor even in the lighter +out-of-door sports, he was willing to join one of those clubs, if it was +required of him. + +His reference to Johnny McComas was designed, no doubt, to repel her; +but the effect, as became perfectly apparent, was quite the contrary. +She was interested, even fascinated, by the rise of a man from so little +to so much. She found words and words to express her admiration of +Johnny's type, and when English words ran short she found words in +French. He was _gaillard_; he had _elan_. What wasn't he? What hadn't +he? Bits of bravado, I still incline to think. + +No, the McComases were not to be left behind all of a sudden. One day +she made another excursion to the outskirts with them; and she reported +it to Raymond, with a little air of suppressed mockery, as a perfectly +unobjectionable jaunt. She had gone with them to the cemetery. Johnny's +mother had died the year before, and he had been putting up a monument +in Roselands. This structure, it developed, was no mere memorial to an +individual. It was a tall shaft, set in the middle of a large lot. I saw +it later myself: a lavish erection (with all its accessory features +taken into account)--one designed, as I felt, to show Johnny himself to +posterity as an ancestor, as the founder of a family line. Assuredly his +own name, aside from the tall obelisk itself, was the largest thing in +view. + +Raymond took this account of Johnny's latest phase with an admirable +seriousness; he thought the better of him for it. He himself was +inclined to divide human-kind into two classes, those who had +cemetery-lots (with monuments), and those who had not. The latter, of +course, are in a majority everywhere. One thinks of Naples and of the +sad road that winds up past the Alhambra to--Well, yes; in a majority, +of course; and inevitably so in a large town suddenly thrown together +by a heaping up of fortuitous and miscellaneous elements. In later +years, when things were going rather badly with Raymond, and when +consideration seemed to fail, he could always comfort himself with +thoughts of the Princes' own monument in that same cemetery. This was +another tall shaft in a gray granite now no longer to be found, and had +been set up by old Jehiel on the occasion of the reinterment of some +infants by his first wife--a transaction carried out years before +Raymond was born. Some of the dates on the base of the monument went +back to the early thirties. Well, there it stood, with the subordinated +headstones of Jehiel and old Beulah, of his own parents, and of the +half-mythical babes who, if they had given nothing else to the world, +had furnished a future nephew with a social perspective. Raymond, +reconsidering Johnny's recent effort, now began to disparage that +improvised background, and led his wife to view his own lot--theirs, +hers--only a hundred yards from the other. But she could not respond to +old Jehiel and Beulah--though she tried to be properly sympathetic over +their son and his wife. Still less could she vitalize the infants who +had encountered an epidemic on the prairie frontier and had succumbed +more than three score years ago. If she thought of any child at all, she +thought doubtless of little Albert (now romping about in his first tweed +knickerbockers), who would not die for many years, perhaps, and who was +like enough to be buried in quite another spot. + +But I think she thought, most of all, of the manly, cheerful sorrow of +Johnny McComas before the new monument in the other lot. + + +III + +These were also days of panic. Banks went down and bank officials threw +themselves after. The city was thrilled, even charmed, to find that its +financial perturbations touched, however slightly, the nerves of London +and Paris. I myself was in Algeria that winter: my Elsie and I had +decided on three months along the Mediterranean. It was on the white, +glaring walls of the casino at Biskra that the news was first bulletined +for our eyes. It had a glare of its own, I assure you: for a few days +we knew little enough how we ourselves might be standing. + +I thought of the Mid-Continent, with its cumbersome counters and +partitions done in walnut veneer and its old-fashioned pavement in +squares of black and white. I thought too of Johnny McComas's new +institution, with so many bright brass handrails and such a spread of +tasteful mosaics underfoot. How had they fared? Well, they had fared +quite differently. Why should a big, old bank go under, while a new, +little bank continues to float. I cannot tell you. I was far away at the +time. Perhaps I could not tell you even if I had been on the spot. And +to other questions, more important still, I may be unable to give, when +the pinch comes, a clearer answer. The Mid-Continent dashed, or drifted, +into the rocky hands of a receiver; and McComas's bank, after a +fortnight of wobbling, righted itself and kept on its way. + +I saw Raymond again in March. The receivership was going on languidly. +Prospects were bright for nobody. + +"All this puts an end to _one_ of my plans, anyhow," he said. + +"What plan is that?" I asked. + +I was reminded that these were also the days of a quickened interest in +education. This interest was expressing itself in large new +institutions, and these institutions were generously embodying +themselves in solid stone--in mullions, groins, gargoyles, finials, and +the whole volume of approved scholastic detail. Donors were grouping +themselves in "halls" and dormitories round a certain inchoate campus, +and were putting on the fronts of their buildings their own names, or +the names of deceased husbands or wives, fathers or mothers--so many +bids for a monumental immortality. + +"I had hoped for a Prince Hall," said Raymond. And he explained that it +would have been in memory of his parents. + +I must pause for a moment on this matter. I do not believe that Raymond +had ever thought, in seriousness, of any such gift. It must have been at +best an errant fancy, and if concerned with commemorating anybody +concerned with commemorating himself. But I will say this for him: he +never was disposed to try getting things out of people, for he hated +attempts at trickery almost as much as he detested the exercise of the +shrewdness involved in bargaining and dickering. Per contra, he often +showed himself not averse to giving things to other people; but the +basis for that giving must be clearly understood all round. He would not +compete; he would not struggle; he would not descend to a war of wits. +His to bestow, from some serene height; his the role, in fact, of the +kindly patron. Let but his own superiority be recognized--let him only +be regarded as _hors concours_--and he would sometimes deign to do the +most generous acts. These acts embraced, now and again, the +entertainment of writers and artists, either at his home or elsewhere: +his fellows--for he was a writer and an artist too. But it was all done +with the understanding that there was a difference: he was a writer and +an artist--but he was something more. Those who failed to feel the +difference were not always bidden a second time. + +And his fancy for patronage was developing just at a time when patronage +was becoming more difficult, awkward, impracticable! But though "Prince +Hall" never saw the light, other and humbler forms of patronage came to +be accepted by him. + +Toward the end of April Raymond and his wife joined one of the clubs +which he had brought to her notice. Though in a formative stage, like +others, it was good (we ourselves joined it some few years later); and +she made it her concern, through the summer, to give it some of those +shaping pats which--for a new club, as for a new vase--have the greater +value the earlier they are bestowed. She was active about the place, and +she became conspicuous. + +It was soon seen that she was "gay"--or was inclined to be, under +favoring conditions. The conditions were most favoring, it began to be +felt, when her husband was not about. A good many thought him stiff, and +a few who used obsolete dictionary words pronounced him proud--a term +stately enough to constitute somehow a tribute, though a damnatory one. +It was soon seen, too, that just as he irked her, so she disparaged +him--an open road to others. + +One day she gave a lunch at the club--places for a dozen. Johnny McComas +appeared there for the first time. It was a plainer place than his own, +but I credit him with perceiving that it was much more worth while. +Adele McComas did not appear--for a good reason. Those obstreperous +twins now had a little sister two weeks old. The wife was doubtless +better at home, but was the husband better at the club? If I had been a +member at that time, and present, I should have felt like following him +to some corner of the veranda and saying: "Oh, come, now, Johnny, will +this quite do?" Well, I know what his look would have been--it came +later. He would have turned that wide, round face on me, with the curly +hair about the temples which gave him somehow an expression of abiding +youth and frankness; and he would have directed those hard, bright blue +eyes of his to look straight ahead at me--eyes that seemed to hold back +nothing, yet really told nothing at all; and would have disclaimed any +wrong-doing or any intention of wrong-doing. And I should have felt +myself a foolish meddler. + +Well, the innocent informalities of the summer were resumed by the same +set in town next winter. The memories and the methods of one season were +tided over to another. Gertrude was still "gay"--perhaps gayer--and a +little more openly impatient with her husband, and a little more openly +disdainful of him. Young men swarmed and fluttered, and those who had +"never tried it on" before seemed inclined to try it on now. + +I take, on the whole, a tempered view--by which I mean, a favorable +view--of our society and its moral tone. I am assured, and I believe +from my own observations, that this is higher than in some other of our +large cities. I dislike scandal, and I have no desire to bear tales. +Either is far from being the object of these present pages. Nothing that +I present need be taken as typical, as tyrannously representative. + +Raymond criticized, expostulated. Friends began to come to him with +impressions and reports. I--whether for good or ill--was not one of +these. They named names--names which I shall not record here. But it was +one of Raymond's own impressions, and a vivid one, which finally +prompted him to make a move. + + +IV + +January found the social life of the town in full swing. We had +recovered from last year's financial jolt, and entertaining was +constant. Raymond and his wife were invited out a good deal. He was +bored by it all; but his wife remained interested and indefatigable. +Finally came a dance at one of the great houses. Raymond rebelled, and +refused point-blank to go: an evening in his library was his mood. His +wife protested, cajoled, and he finally found a reason for giving in. + +As I say, they were bidden to one of the great houses--one of the few +that possessed an actual facade, a central court, and a big staircase: +it had too its galleries of paintings and of Oriental curios before +Oriental curios became too common. Its owner was also, with the rest, a +musical amateur. He was a man of forty-five, and like Raymond had a wife +too many years younger than himself for his own comfort. This lively +lady lived on fiddles and horns--dancing was an inexhaustible pleasure. +At her dancing-parties, of which she gave three or four a season, her +husband would show himself below for a few moments for civility's sake, +and then retire to a remote den on an upper floor, well shut out from +the sounds of his wife's frivolous measures, but accessible to a few +habitues of age and tastes approximating his own. + +The question of music of another quality and to another purpose was in +the air--it was a matter of endowing and housing an orchestra. Informal +_pour-parlers_ were under way in various quarters, and Raymond felt +disposed, and even able, to contribute in a modest measure. It was his +pride to have been asked, and it was his pride, despite untoward +conditions, to put up a good front and do as much as he could. An hour's +confab over cigarettes in that retired little den might clarify one +atmosphere, if not another. + +The court and its staircase were set with palms, as is the ineluctable +wont on such occasions and for such places; and people, between the +dances, or during them, were brushing the fronds aside as they thronged +the galleries round the court to see the Barbizon masters then in vogue +and the Chinese jades. As Raymond passed down the stairway, he met his +wife coming up on the arm of Johnny McComas. + +"She looked self-conscious," Raymond said to me, a few days after. I +told him that he had seen only what he was expecting to see. + +"And he looked too beastly self-satisfied." I told him that of late I +had seldom seen Johnny look any other way. + +"Where was his wife?" he asked. I told him she might easily be in the +crowd on some other man's arm. + +"Why were they there at all?" he demanded. And I did not tell him that +probably they were there through his own wife's good offices. + +That meeting on the stairs!--he made a grievance of it, an injury. The +earlier meeting, with Johnny's own wife on his arm, had annoyed him as a +general assertion of prosperity. This present meeting, with Raymond +Prince's wife on Johnny's arm, exasperated him as a challenging +assertion of power and predominance. + +"I shall act," Raymond declared. + +"Nothing rash," said I. "Nothing unconsidered, I hope." + +"I shall act," he repeated. And he set his jaw more decisively than a +strong man always finds necessary. + + +V + +Raymond's mind was turning more and more to a set scene with McComas; +some meeting between them was, to his notion, a _scene a faire_. It +seemed demanded by a Gallic sense of form: it must be gone through with +as a requisite to his role of offended husband. + +One difficulty was that Raymond fluctuated daily, almost hourly, in his +view of his wife--of _the_ wife, I may say. To-day he took the old +view: the wife was her husband's property and any attempt on her was a +deadly injury to him. To-morrow he took the newer view: the wife was an +individual human being and a free moral agent; therefore a lapse, while +it meant disgrace for her, was, for him, but an affront which he must +endure with dignified composure. + +Meanwhile the pair saw little of each other, and Albert, puzzled, began +to enter upon his opportunity (a wide and lingering one it became) for +learning adjustment to awkward and disconcerting conditions. + +Well, Raymond had his meeting. Imagine whether it was agreeable. Imagine +whether it was agreeable to me, in whose office it was held. Raymond had +the difficult part of one who must act because he has deliberately +committed himself to action, yet has no sure ground to act upon, and +therefore no line to take with real effect. It was here and now that +McComas turned his round face foursquare to his uncertain accuser, and +let loose a steady, unspeaking stare from those hard blue eyes, and +declared that nothing had occurred upon which an accusation could justly +be based. He was emphatic; and he was blunt; the son and grandson of a +rustic. + +Nothing, he said. Had there really been nothing? You are entitled to +ask. And I might be inclined to answer, if I knew. I simply don't. I was +in position to know something, to know much; but everything?--no. + +Think, if you please, of the many domestic situations which must pass +without the full light of detailed knowledge--knowledge that comes too +late, or never comes at all. Consider the simple, willful girl who +marries impulsively on the assumption that the new acquaintance is a +bachelor. Cases have been known where it developed that he was not. +Consider the phrase of the marriage service, "if any of you know just +cause or impediment": who can declare that, in a given instance, some +impediment, moral if not legal, might not be brought against either +contracting party, however trustful the other? Consider the story of the +anxious American mother who, alarmed by reports about a fascinating +scoundrel under whom her daughter was studying music somewhere in +mid-Europe, went abroad alone to investigate. Her letter to the awaiting +father, back home, ran for page after page on non-essentials and dealt +with the real point only in a brief, embarrassed, bewildered postscript +of one line: "Oh, William, _I don't know_!" Neither do I "know." But my +account of later events may help you to decide the question for +yourselves. + +Raymond had set his mind on a divorce. If grounds could not be found in +one quarter, they must be found in another. If McComas, that prime +figure, was unable to bring aid, then there must be cooeperation among +the other and lesser figures. Raymond revived and reviewed the tales +that had involved several younger men. The more he dwelt on them, the +more inflamed he became, and the more certain that he had been wronged. + +I did not accompany him through his proceedings--such advice as I had +given him near the beginning was the advice simply of a friend. My own +part of the great field of the law is a relatively unimpassioned +one--office-work involving real-estate, conveyancing, loans, and the +like. I suggested to Raymond the proper counsel for the particular case, +and there, for a while, I left him. + +His wife's parents came on from the East. The mother, after some years +abroad, had lately resumed her domestic duties in the land of her birth. +The father, who knew all of one subject, and nothing of any other, +detached himself for a week or two from the one worthy interest in life +and accompanied her. The "street" was still there when he returned. They +seemed experienced and worldly-wise in their respective fields and their +respective aspects, but they entered upon this new matter with a poor +grace. Here was another mother who did not quite "know," and another +father who waited, at a second remove, for definite knowledge that did +not quite come. First there were maladroit attempts to bring a +reconciliation; and afterwards, and more shrewdly, endeavors to gain as +much as possible for their daughter from the wreck. + +Raymond was determined to keep possession of Albert. Mrs. McComas, +mother of three, stoutly declared that the mother should have her child. +Other women said the same, and maintained the point regardless of the +mother's course or conduct. Many women have said the same in many cases, +and perhaps they are right. Perhaps they are completely right in the +case of a boy of six, who surely needs a woman's care. But it is not +difficult, even when material is more abundant than definite, to throw +an atmosphere of dubiousness about a woman and to make it appear that +she is not a "proper person...." So it appeared to the judge in this +case, and so he ruled--with a shading, however. Albert might spend with +his mother one month every summer--and some financial concession on +Raymond's part helped make the time brief. However, she was to have +nothing to say about Albert's mode of life through the rest of the year, +and nothing (more specifically) about his education. + +"That makes him mine," said Raymond. + +And he set his lips firmly. He was one of those who set their lips +firmly after the event is determined. + +I do not know whether Raymond had any real affection for Albert. I do +not know whether he realized what it was for a father to undertake, +single handed, the charge of a boy of six. I think that what moved him +chiefly was his determination to carry a point. However all this may be, +I remember what he said as, after the decree, he walked out with +Albert's hand in his. + +"Well, it's over!" + +Over!--as if a separation involving a child is ever "over"! + + + + +PART VI + +I + + +His domestic difficulty left behind, Raymond settled down to a +middle-aged life of dignity and leisure--or attempted to. But the trial +had rather shaken the dignity, and the sole control of Albert ate into +the leisure. There followed, naturally, a period of restlessness and +discontent. + +Those who imputed no blame to Raymond still felt it unfortunate, even +calamitous, that he should not have learned how to get on with a young +wife. But there were those that did blame him--blamed him for an +unbending, self-satisfied prig who would have driven almost any spirited +young woman to desperation. These disparaged him; sometimes--not always +covertly--they ridiculed him. That hurt not only his dignity, but his +pride. + +Some of you have perhaps been looking for a generalized expression of +general ideas--for some observations on marriage and divorce which +should have the detachable and quotable quality of epigram. Yet suppose +I were to observe, just here, that Marriage makes a promise to the ear +and breaks it to the hope; or that Divorce is the martyr's crown after +the tortures of Incompatibility; or that Marriage is the Inferno, the +Divorce-Court the Purgatory, and Divorce itself the Paradiso of human +life? You would not be likely to think the better of me, and I should +certainly think less well of myself. Though I am conscious of a homespun +quality of thought and diction, I must keep within the limits set me by +nature, eschewing "brilliancy" and continuing to deal not in abstract +considerations but in concrete facts. + +Little Albert spent a good part of his time in a condition of +bewilderment; he perceived early that he must not ask questions, that he +must not try to understand. At intervals he ran noisily through the big +house and made it seem emptier than ever. A nurse, or governess, or +attendant of some special qualifications was required--even for the +short time before he should begin his month with his mother, who was +spending some months with her parents in the East. Even the +preliminaries for this small event occasioned considerable thought and +provoked a reluctant correspondence. His mother--prompted probably by +her own mother--wrote on the subject of Albert's summer clothes. She +wished to buy most of them herself. The Eastern climate in summer had +its special points; also local usage in children's costuming must be +considered--in detailed appearance her child must conform measurably to +that particular juvenile society in which he was to appear. Then there +was the nurse, or governess. Should Albert be brought on by her? And +should she, once in the East, remain there to take him back; or...? + +"Oh, the devil!" cried Raymond, in his library, as he turned page after +page of diffuse discourse. "How long is she going to run on? How many +more things is she going to think of?" + +And she had felt impelled to address him, despite the cool tone of her +letter, as "Dear Raymond." And that seemed to put him under the +compulsion of addressing her, in turn, as "Dear Gertrude"! Truly, modes +of address were scanty, inadequate. + +Well, Albert went East (wearing some of the disesteemed things he +already possessed) to be outfitted for the summer shores of New Jersey. +His governess took him as far as Philadelphia, where the Eastern +connection met him, and "poored" him, sent the woman back home, and took +him out on the shining sands. During the child's absence she made covers +for the drawing-room sofas and chairs; the house, bereft of Albert and +draped in pale Holland, became more dismal than ever. + +Raymond, now left alone, was free to devise a way of life in single +harness. He liked it quite as well as the other way. He told himself, +and he told me, that he liked it even better. I believe he did; and I +believe he was relieved by the absence of Albert, whose little daily +regimen, even when directed by competent assistance, had begun to grind +into his father's consciousness. I even believe that the one serious +drawback in Raymond's comfortable summer was the need of studying over a +school for Albert in the fall. + +Raymond spent much of his time among his books. He had long since given +up trying to "write anything"; less than ever was he in a mood to try +that sort of exercise now. He looked over his shelves and resolved that +he would make up a collection of books for the Art Museum. They were to +be books on architecture, of which he had many. The Museum library, with +hundreds of architectural students in and out, had few volumes in +architecture, or none. He visioned a Raymond Prince alcove--those boys +should be enabled to learn about the Byzantine buildings, just then +coming into their own; and about the Renaissance in all its varieties, +especially the Spanish Plateresque. He had a number of expensive and +elaborate publications which dealt with that period, and with others, +and he resolved to add new works from outside. He resumed his habit of +going to book-auctions (though little developed at them), dickered with +local dealers who limited themselves to a choice clientele, and sent to +London for catalogues over which he studied endlessly. He would still +play the role of patron and benefactor. Perhaps he foresaw the time when +the Museum would recognize donors of a certain importance by bronze +memorial tablets set up in its entrance hall. Well, he would make his +alcove important enough for any measure of recognition. It was all a +work which interested him in its details and which was more in +correspondence than a larger one with his present means. + + +II + +Before my wife and I left for an outing on the seaboard, news came from +that quarter about Gertrude and Albert. Intelligence even reached us, +through the same correspondent, regarding Mrs. Johnny McComas. Mrs. +Johnny, with her three children, was frequenting the same sands and the +same board walk. It was possible to imagine the arrangement as having +been suggested by Raymond's one-time wife. See it for yourself. Mrs. +Raymond and Mrs. Johnny slowly promenading back and forth together, or +seated side by side beneath their respective parasols or under some gay +awning shared in common, while their authentic children played about +them. What if people--whether friends, acquaintances, or +strangers--_did_ say, "She is divorced"? There she was, with her own son +plainly beside her and her closest woman friend giving her complete +countenance. If a separation, who to blame? The husband, doubtless. In +fact, there was already springing up in her Eastern circle, I was to +find, the tradition of a dour, stiff man, years too old, with whom it +was impossible to live. + +It is unlikely that Gertrude, at any time--even at this time--would have +been willing to rank Mrs. Johnny as her closest friend. But Mrs. Johnny +had spoken a good word for her in a trying season, and at the present +juncture her friendly presence was invaluable. She could speak a good +word now--she was, so to say, a continuing witness. The two, I presume, +were seen together a good deal, along with the children, especially +Albert; and Mrs. Johnny, cooeperating (if unconsciously) with Gertrude's +mother, did much to stabilize a somewhat uncertain situation. + +It was the understanding that Mrs. Johnny was in rather poor health this +summer; the birth of her little daughter had left her a different woman, +and the tonic of the sea-air was needed to remake her into her +high-colored and energetic self. There was nothing especially reviving +in the Wisconsin lakes, to which (placid inland ponds) they had confined +their previous summer sojourns: and the vogue of the fresher resorts +farther north on the greater lakes had not yet reached them. This year +let the salt surf roll and the salt winds blow. + +My wife and I, in our Eastern peregrinations, passed a few days at the +particular beach frequented by the two mothers. We really found in Mrs. +Johnny's aspect and carriage some justification for the incredible +legend of her poor health. She walked with less vigor than formerly and +was glad to sit down more frequently; and once or twice we saw her +taking the air at her bedroom window instead of on the broad walk before +the shops. Her boys played robustly on the sands, and would play with +Albert--or rather, let him play with them--if urged to. But, like most +twins, they were self-sufficing; besides, they were several years older. +To produce the full effect of team-work between the families required +some perseverance and a bit of manoeuvring. The little girl was hardly +two. + +Gertrude and her mother welcomed us rather emphatically--too +emphatically, we felt. The latter offered us politic lunches in the +large dining-room of their hotel, and laid great stress upon our +_provenance_ when we met her friends on the promenade. We seemed to be +becoming a part of a general plan of campaign--pawns on the board. This +shortened our stay. + +The day before we left, Johnny McComas himself appeared. He had found a +way to leave his widely ramifying interests for a few odd hours. A man +of the right temperament gains greatly by a temporary estival +transplantation; and if Johnny always contrived to seem dominant and +prosperous at home, he now seemed lordly and triumphant abroad. He +"dressed the part": he was almost as over-appropriately inappropriate as +little Albert himself. He played ostentatiously with his boys on the +sands, and did not mind Albert as one of their eye-drawing party. He, +whether his wife did or no, responded fully and immediately to the salt +waves and the salt winds. + +"Immense! isn't it?" he said to me, throwing out his chest to the breeze +and teetering in his white shoes, out of sheer abundance of vitality, on +the planks beneath him. + +There was only one drawback: his wife was really not well. And he +wondered audibly to me, while my own wife was having a few words near by +with Gertrude, how it was that a young woman could, within the first +year of her married life, bear twins with no hurt or harm, and yet +weaken, later, through the birth of a single child. + +"She doesn't seem at all lively, that's a fact," he said, with a +possible touch of impatience. "But another two weeks will do wonders for +her," he added: "she'll go back all right." + +Prepotent Johnny! No doubt it was a drain on vitality to live abreast of +such a man, to keep step with his robustious stride. + +On the forenoon of the day we left, Johnny was walking with Gertrude and +her mother along the accepted promenade. His excess of vitality and of +action gave him an air of gallantry not altogether pleasing to see. His +wife sat at her window, looking down and waving her hand rather +languidly. The Johnny of her belief had come, in part, assuredly, for a +bit of enjoyment. She smiled unconcernedly. + + +III + +Raymond waited back home for Albert, and Albert did not return. We +gathered from a newspaper published near the shores of Narragansett Bay +that Albert, as his mother's triumphant possession, was now being shown +at another resort--and a more important one, judging by his +grandmother's social affiliations; also, that Mrs. McComas, who had not +done any too well on the Jersey shore, was appearing at the new +_plage_--doubtless as the just and sympathetic friend (of social +prominence in her own community) who had stood stanch through +difficulties unjustly endured. Her husband himself had, of course, +returned to the West. + +His business called him, even in mid-summer. He had his bank, but he had +more than his bank. There are banks and banks--you can divide them up in +several different ways. There are, of course,--as we have seen,--the +banks that fail, and the banks that do not. And there are the banks that +exist as an end in themselves, and the banks that exist as a means to +other things: those that function along methodically, without taking on +any extraneous features; and those that serve as a nucleus for +accumulating interests, as a fulcrum to move affairs through a wide and +varied range. Of this kind was McComas's. Johnny was not the man to +stand still and let routine take its way--not the man to mark time, even +through the vacation season. Nor could he have done so even if he had +wanted to. But all I need say, just here, is that he came back home +again after three or four days, all told, and that any threatened +embarassment was nullified, or at least postponed. + +Raymond heard in silence my account of the doings on the Atlantic shore: +only a wry twist of the mouth and a flare of the nostrils. But as the +weeks went on, and still no Albert, his anger became articulate. + +"I shall teach her that an agreement is an agreement," he declared. "She +will never try this again." + +Albert finally came home, three weeks late; his mother brought him +herself. The governess transferred him from the hands of one parent to +those of the other; and Raymond had asked my presence for that moment, +as a sort of moral urge. + +"Who knows," he asked, "what delay she may try for next?" + +He gave one look at the picturesque, if not fantastic, toggery of his +restored child. + +"Did you ever see anything like that?" he said scornfully; and I foresaw +a sacrificial bonfire--or its equivalent--with Albert presently clothed +in sane autumn garb. + +Albert was followed, within a week, by a letter from his mother. This +was diffuse and circumlocutory, like the first. But its general sense +was clear. If Raymond was thinking of putting Albert into a +boarding-school.... + +"There she goes again!" exclaimed the exacerbated father. "A matter with +which, by hard-and-fast agreement, she has absolutely nothing to do!" + +However, if he was thinking of a boarding-school.... + +"A child barely seven!" cried Raymond. "Why, half of them will hardly +consider one of eight!" + +Still, if he was thinking--well, Mrs. McComas knew of a charming one, an +old-established one, one in which the head-master's wife, a delightful, +motherly soul.... And it was just within the Wisconsin line, not forty +miles from town.... + +"I see her camping at the gate!" said Raymond bitterly. "Or taking a +house there. Or spending months at a hotel near by. Constantly fussing +round the edge of things. Running in on every visitors' day...." + +"Likely enough," I said. "A mother's a mother." + +"Well," rejoined Raymond, "the boy _shall_ go to school--in another +year. But the school will be a good deal more than forty miles from +here--no continual week-end trips. And it will not be in a town that has +an endurable hotel--that ought to be easy to arrange, in this part of +the world. No, it won't be near any town at all. I don't suppose she +would take a--tent?" he queried sardonically. + +"To some mothers the blue tent of heaven would alone suffice," I +said--perhaps unworthily. + +"Rubbish!" he ejaculated; and I felt that a word fitly spoken--or +perhaps unfittingly--was rebuked. + + +IV + +In due season, Albert went off to school, according to his father's +plans; and it was not the school which Adele McComas had hoped to see +Albert enter a little before her own boys should leave it. Raymond, +after another year of daily attentions to Albert's small daily concerns, +was glad to have him away. He did not see his boy's mother a frequent +visitor at this school, nor did he purpose being a frequent visitor +himself. The establishment was approved, well-recommended: let it do its +work unaided, unhindered. + +No, Adele McComas never saw Albert at the school of her predilection; +indeed, it was not long after the choice had been made that she lost all +opportunity of seeing anything at all. She withered out, like a +high-colored, hardy-seeming flower that belies all promise, and died +when her little girl was months short of four. + +Her name was on the new monument within six weeks. It was the third +name. That of Johnny's father had lately been placed above that of his +mother, and that of his wife was now clearly legible upon the opposite +side of the shaft's base. Some of Johnny's friends saw in this +promptitude a high mark of respect and affection; others felt a haste, +almost undue, to turn the new erection into a bulletin of "actualities"; +and a few surmised that had the work not been done with promptitude it +might have come to be done in a leisurely fashion that spelled neglect: +if it were to be done, 't were well it were done quickly--a formal token +of regard checked off and disposed of. + +During Albert's first year at his school his mother made two or three +appearances. She was exigent, and she showed herself to the school +authorities as fertile in blandishments. The last of her visits was made +in a high-powered touring-car. Raymond heard of this, and warned the +school head against a possible attempt at abduction. + +The second year opened more quietly. One visit--a visit without +eagerness and obviously lacking in any fell intent, and that was all. +It was fair to surmise that this once-urgent, once-vehement mother had +developed a newer and more compelling interest. + +She had made herself a figure at Adele McComas's funeral--or, at least, +others had made her a figure at it. She began to be seen here and there +in the company of the widower, and it was reported privately to me that +she had been perceived standing side by side with him in decorous +contemplation, as it were in a sort of transient, elegiac revery _a +deux_, before the monument. It was no surprise, therefore, when we +heard, two months later, that they had married. + +"That stable-boy!" said Raymond. "After--me!" + +The expression was strong, and I did not care to assent. + +Instead, I began:-- + +"And now, whatever may or may not have been, everything is--" + +"Everything is right, at last!" he concluded for me. + +"And if they--those two--are put in the right," he went on, "I suppose I +am put in the wrong--and more in the wrong than ever!" + +He stared forward, across his littered table, beyond his bookcases, +through his thick-lensed glasses, as if confronting the stiffening +legend of a husband too old, too dry, too unpliable; the victim, +finally, of a sudden turn that was peculiarly malapropos and +disrelishing, the head of a household tricked rather ridiculously before +the world. + +Reserve now began to grow on him. He simplified relationships and saw +fewer people. Before these, and before the many at a greater remove, he +would maintain a cautious dignity as a detached and individual human +creature, as a man,--however much, in the world's eyes, he might have +seemed to fail as a husband. + + +V + +John W. McComas, at forty-five, was in apogee. His bank, as I have said, +was coming to be more than a mere bank; it was now the focus of many +miscellaneous enterprises. Several of these were industrial companies; +prospectuses bearing his name and that of his institution constantly +came my way. Some of these undertakings were novel and daring, but most +of them went through; and he was more likely to use his associates than +they were to use him. As I have said, he possessed but two interests in +the world: his business--now his businesses--and his family; and he +concentrated on both. It might be said that he insisted on the most +which each would yield. + +He concentrated on his new domestic life with peculiar intensity. His +boys were away at a preparatory school and were looking forward to +college. He centred on his daughter, a future hope, and on his wife, a +present reality and triumph. Over her, in particular, he bent like a +flame, a bright flame that dazzled and did not yet sear. He was able, by +this time, to coalesce with the general tradition in which she had been +brought up--or at least with the newer tradition to which she had +adjusted herself; and he was able to bring to bear a personal power the +application of which she had never experienced. She found herself +handled with decision. She almost liked it--at least it simplified some +teasing problems. He employed a direct, bluff, hearty kindness; but +strength underlay the kindness, and came first--came uppermost--if +occasion seriously required. Life with Raymond had been a laxative, when +not an irritant; life with Johnny McComas became a tonic. She had felt +somewhat loose and demoralized; now she felt braced. + +Johnny was rich, and was getting richer yet. He was richer, much, than +he had been but a few years before; richer than Raymond Prince, whose +worldly fortunes seemed rather to dip. Johnny could give his wife +whatever she fancied; when she hesitated, things were urged upon her, +forced upon her. She, in her turn, was now a delegate of luxury. He +approved--and insisted upon--a showy, emphatic way of life, and a more +than liberal scale of expenditure. He wanted to show the world what he +could do for a fine woman; and I believe he wanted to show Raymond +Prince. + +Gossip had long since faded away to nothingness. If anybody had wondered +at Johnny's course--a course that had run through possible dubiousness +to hard-and-fast finality--the wonder was now inaudible. If anybody felt +in him a lack of fastidiousness, the point was not pressed. The marriage +seemed a happy solution, on the whole; and the people most +concerned--those who met the new pair--appeared to feel that a problem +was off the board and glad to have it so. + +Raymond, on the eve of the marriage, had softened things for himself by +leaving for a few months in Rome. Back, he began to cast about for some +means of occupation and some way of making a careful assertion of his +dignity. At this time "society" was beginning to sail more noticeably +about the edge of the arts, and an important coterie was feeling that +something might well be done to lift the drama from its state of +degradation. Why not build--or remodel--a theatre, they asked, form a +stock company, compose a repertory, and see together a series of such +performances as might be viewed without a total departure from taste and +intelligence? + +The experiment ran its own quaint course. The remodeling of the hall +chosen introduced the sponsors of the movement to the fire-laws and +resulted in a vast, unlooked-for expense. A good company--though less +stress was laid on its roster than on the list of guarantors--went +astray in the hands of a succession of directors, not always competent. +The subscribers refused to occupy their boxes more than one night a +week, and, later on, not even that: the space was filled for a while +with servitors and domestic dependents, and presently by nobody.... + +Raymond went into the enterprise. He put in a goodly sum of money that +never came back to him; and if he cooeperated but indifferently, or +worse, he was not more inept than some of his associates. He was +displeased to learn that the McComases had given enough to the +guarantee-fund to insure them a box. And it offended him that, on the +opening night, his former wife, one of a large and assertive party, +should make her voice heard during intermissions (and at some other +times too) quite across the small auditorium. The situation was +generally felt to be piquant, and at the end of the performance people +in the lobby were amused (save the few who had the affair greatly at +heart) to hear Johnny McComas's comment on the play. It was a +far-fetched problem-play from the German, and Raymond had been one of +those who favored it for an opening. + +"Did you ever see such a play in your life?" queried Johnny. "What was +it all about? And wasn't _he_ the fool!" + +McComas--really caring nothing for the evening's entertainment either +way--could easily afford a large amount for social prestige, and his +wife for general social consolidation. It was little to Johnny that his +thousands went up in exacting systems of ventilation and in salaries for +an expensive staff; but it was awkward for Raymond to lose a sum which, +while absolutely less, was relatively much greater. After a few months +the scheme was dropped; the expensive installation went to the advantage +of a vaudeville manager; Raymond felt poorer, even slightly crippled, +and the voice of the present Mrs. Johnny McComas ran till the end +across that tiny _salle_. + +This, I am glad to say, was the last of Raymond's endeavors to patronize +the arts. + + +VI + +Albert's last year at his distant school ended rather abruptly. He came +home, ailing, about a month before the close of the school year. He was +thin and languid. He may have been growing too fast; he may have been +studying too hard; he may have missed the "delightful motherly soul" who +would have brooded over him at the school first proposed; or the +drinking-water may have been infected--_que sais-je_? Well, Albert moped +during much of May through the big house, and his mother heard of his +return and his moping, made the most of it, and insisted on a +visitation. + +The child-element, of late, had not been large in her life. Her two tall +stepsons were flourishing in absence; she had had no second child of her +own; little Althea was nice enough, and she liked her pretty well.... +But there was her own flesh and blood crying for her--perhaps. So she +descended on the old, familiar interior--familiar and distasteful--and +resumed with zeal the role of mother. + +Her presence was awkward, anomalous. The servants were disconcerted, and +scarcely knew how to take her fluttery yet imperious orders. For Raymond +himself, as any one could see, it was all purgatory--or worse. Every +room had its peculiar and disagreeable memories. There was the +chamber-threshold over which they had discussed her tendency to out-mode +the mode and to push every extreme of fashion to an extreme still more +daring--for that black gown with spangles, or whatever, had been but the +first of a long, flagrant line. There was the particular spot in the +front hall, before that monumental, old-fashioned, black-walnut +"hat-rack," where he had cautioned more care in her attitude toward +young bachelors, if only in consideration of his own dignity, his +"face." There was the dining-room--yes, she stayed to meals, of course, +and to many of them!--where (in the temporary absence of service) he +had criticized more than once the details of her housekeeping and of her +menu--had told her just how he "wanted things" and how he meant to have +them. And in each case she had pouted, or scoffed, and had contrived +somehow to circumvent him, to thwart him, and to get with well-cloaked, +or with uncloaked, insistence her own way. Heavenly recollections! He +felt, too, from her various glances and shrugs, that the house was more +of a horror to her than ever, and, above all, that abominable +orchestrion more hugely preposterous. + +Albert kept mostly to his room. It was the same room which Raymond +himself had occupied as a boy. It had the same view of that window above +the stable at which Johnny McComas had sorted his insects and arranged +his stamps. The stable was now, of course, a garage; but the time was on +the way when both car and chauffeur would be dispensed with. Parallel +wires still stretched between house and garage, as an evidence of +Raymond's endeavor to fill in the remnant of Albert's previous vacation +with some entertaining novelty that might help wipe out his recollection +of the month lately spent with his mother. Albert was modern enough to +prefer wireless--just then coming in--to "bugs" and postage-stamps; but +the time remaining had been short. Besides, Albert liked the theatre +better; and Raymond, during those last weeks in August, had sat through +many woeful and stifling performances of vaudeville that he might regain +and keep his hold on his son. His presence at these functions was +observed and was commented upon by several persons who were aware of the +aid he was giving for a bettered stage. + +"Fate's irony!" he himself would sometimes say inwardly, with a sidelong +glance at Albert, preoccupied with knockabouts or trained dogs. + +Albert spent some of his daylight hours in bed; some in moving about the +room spiritlessly. He looked out with lack-lustre eyes at the sagging +wires, and seemed to be wondering how they could ever have interested +him. His mother, as soon as she saw him, put him at death's door--at +least she saw him headed straight for that dark portal. She began to +insist, after a few days, that he go home with her: he would be hers, by +right, within a fortnight, anyhow. Her new house, she declared, would be +an immensely better place for him, and would immensely help him to get +well, if--with a half-sob--he ever _was_ to get well. + +She knew, of course, the early legend of Johnny McComas, and had no wish +to linger in its locale. + +"You _do_ want to go with your own, own mother--don't you, dear?" + +"Yes," replied Albert faintly. + +The town-house of Johnny McComas, bought at an open-eyed bargain and on +a purely commercial basis, had some time since fulfilled its predestined +function. It had been taken over, at a very good price, by an automobile +company; the purchasers had begun to tear it down before the last load +of furniture was fairly out, and had quickly run up a big block in +russet brick and plate glass. Gertrude McComas had had no desire to +inherit memories of her predecessor; if she had not urged the promptest +action her husband's plan might have given him a still more gratifying +profit. + +They had built their new house out on the North Shore. At one time the +society of that quarter had seemed, however desirable to the McComases, +somewhat inaccessible. But the second wife was more likely to help +Johnny thitherward than the first. Besides, the participation of the new +pair in the scheme of dramatic uplift--however slight, essentially--had +made the promised land nearer and brighter. They might now transplant +themselves to that desired field with a certainty of some few social +relations secured in advance. + +They had a long-reaching, rough-cast house, in a semi-Spanish style, +high above the water. They had ten acres of lawn and thicket. They had +their own cow. And there was little Althea--a nice enough child--for a +playmate. + +"Let me get Albert away from all this smoke and grime," his mother +pleaded--or argued--or demanded, dramatically. "Let me give him the +pure country air. Let me give him the right things to eat and drink. Let +me look after his poor little clothes,--if" (with another half-sob) "he +is ever to wear them again. Let me give him a real mother's real care. +You _would_ like that better, wouldn't you, dear?" + +"Yes," said Albert faintly. + +It is quite possible, of course, that his school really had scanted the +motherly touch. + +"You see how it goes!" Raymond finally said to me, one evening, in the +shadow of the orchestrion. "And what she will dress him in _this_ +time...!" + +The whole situation wore on him horribly. There was a light play over +his cheeks and jaws: I almost heard his teeth grit. + +A few days later Albert was transferred to his mother's place in the +country. Raymond consoled himself as best he might with the thought that +this sojourn was, after all, but preliminary, as Gertrude had herself +implied, to the coming month on the Maine coast or at Mackinac. A change +of air, a greater change of air, a change to an air immensely and +unmistakably and immediately tonic and upbuilding--that, as his mother +stated, with emphasis, was what Albert required. + +So Albert, by way of introduction to his real summer, came to be +domiciled under the splendid new roof of Johnny McComas--a roof, to +Raymond's exacerbated sense, gleaming but heavy. Its tiles--he had not +seen them, but he readily visualized them--bore him down. He was not +obliged, as yet, to meet McComas himself. That came later. + + + + +PART VII + +I + + +Albert recovered in due season--a little more rapidly, it may be, than +if he had stayed with his father, but not more completely. His education +progressed, entering another phase, and still with the unauthorized +cooeperation of his mother. During his stay with her she had really +wrought no great havoc in his wardrobe, whatever she may have +accomplished on a previous occasion. In fact, Albert had reached the +point where he dressed in a manlier fashion--a fashion fortunately +standardized beyond a mother's whims. In his turn, as it had been with +his brothers by marriage, it was now the real preparatory school, with +college looming ahead. + +By this time Raymond had completely made his belated adieux to aesthetic +concerns and had begun to concentrate on practical matters--on his own. +They needed his attention, even if he had not the right quality of +attention to give. I had my doubts, and they did not grow less as time +went on. Raymond was now within hail of fifty, and he added to his long +list of earlier mistakes a new mistake peculiar to his years and to his +training--or his lack of it. + +Briefly, he assumed that age in itself brought knowledge, and that young +men in their twenties--even their late twenties--were but boys. The +disadvantage of holding this view became apparent when he began to do +business with them. He depended too much on his own vague fund of +experience, and did not realize how dangerous it might be to encounter +keen specialists--however young--in their own field. He was now engaged +in a general recasting of his affairs, and they came to him in +numbers--bright, boyish, young fellows, he called them. He tended to +patronize them, and he began to deal with them rather informally and +much too confidently. + +The family bank, after languishing along for a liberal time under its +receiver, had been wound up, and the stockholders, among whom he was a +large one but far from the largest, accepted the results and turned wry +faces to new prospects elsewhere. The family holdings of real-estate, on +the edge of the central district rather than in it, did not share the +general and almost automatic advance in values, and an uncertain, +slow-moving scheme for a general public improvement--one that +continually promised to eventuate yet continually held off--had kept one +of his warehouses vacant for years: its only income was contributed by +an advertising company, which utilized part of its front as a +bulletin-board. Rents in this quarter kept down, though taxes--more +through rising rates than increased valuations--went up. And those two +big old houses! Raymond still lived, too expensively in one, and paid +interest on a cumbering old mortgage. The other--old Jehiel's--was +rented, at no great advantage, to a kind of correspondence school which +conducted dubious courses and was precarious pay. + +In such circumstances Raymond began to lend an ear to offers of +"real-estate trades" and to suggestions for reinvestments. But +real-estate, in which almost everybody had once dabbled (with advantage +assumed and usually realized), had now become a game for experts. +Profits for the few: disaster--or at least disillusionment--for the +many. Raymond thought he could "exchange" to advantage, and the bright +young men (who knew what they were about much better than he did) +flocked to help him. Well, one man in a hundred exchanges with profit; +the ninety-and-nine, the further they go the more they lose--onions +peeled coat by coat. Thus Raymond, until I heard of some of his +operations and tried to stop them. One frank-faced, impudent young chap, +who thought he was secure in a contract, I had to frighten off; but +others had preceded him. + +Investments were offered him too: schemes in town, and schemes--bolder +and more numerous--out of town. Some of these had the support of McComas +and his "crowd," and turned out advantageously enough, for those on the +"inside"--to continue the jargon of the day and its interests; but +Raymond sensitively, even fastidiously, stepped away from these, and +trusted himself, rather, to financial free lances who often were not +only without principle, but also without definite foothold. + +"If you would only consult me!" more than once I had occasion to +remonstrate. "Who are these people? What organization have they +got--what responsibility?" + +But though he would dicker with strangers, who took hours of his time +with their specious palaverings, he shrank more and more from his own +tenants and his own agents. One rather important lease had to be renewed +over his head--or behind his back. Still, I do not know that, on this +particular occasion, his interests greatly suffered. + +Thus Raymond began to approach a permanent impairment of his affairs at +an age when recuperation for a man of his deficiencies was as good as +out of the question. Further on still he began to suspect--even to +realize--that he was unfitted to cope with adults. In his later fifties +he began to pat children on their heads in parks and to rub the noses +of horses in the streets. With the younger creatures of the human race +and with the gentler orders of the brute creation he felt he could trust +himself, and still escape disaster. If he found little girls sticking +rows of fallen catalpa-blossoms on the spikes of iron fences, he would +stop and praise their powers of design. He became susceptible to tiny +boys in brown sweaters or infinitesimal blue overalls, and he seldom +passed without a touch of sympathy the mild creatures that helped +deliver the laundry-bundles or the milk. Especially if they were white: +he was always sorry, he said, for white coats in a dirty town. + +But such matters of advancing age are for the future. + + +II + +As regards the affairs of McComas, I naturally had a lesser knowledge. +They were more numerous and more complicated; nor was I close to them. I +can only say that they went on prosperously, and continued to go on +prosperously: their success justified his concentration on them. + +As regards his home and his domestic affairs, I can have more to say. My +wife and I called once or twice at their new house; with a daughter of +twenty-odd, there was no reason why we should not cultivate that +particular suburb, and every reason why we should. + +Johnny's two sons were at home, briefly, as seniors who were soon to +graduate. They were tall, hearty lads, with some of their father's high +coloring. One of them was to be injured on the ball-field in his last +term, and to die at home a month later. The other, recovering some of +the individuality which a twin sometimes finds it none too easy to +assert, was to marry before he had been out of college six weeks--marry +young, like his father before him. The girl, young Althea, rather +resembling her mother,--her own mother,--was beginning to think less of +large hair-bows and more of longer dresses. Her father was quite wrapped +up in her and her stepmother seemed to take to her kindly. + +Johnny, in conducting us over his house, laid great stress on her room. +On her suite, rather; or even on her wing. She had her own study, her +own bath, her own sleeping porch and sun-parlor. Everything had been +very delicately and richly done. And she had her own runabout in the +garage. + +"The boys will go, of course," Johnny said to us, with his arm about his +daughter; "but our little Althea will be a good girl and not leave her +poor old father." + +Ah, yes, girls sometimes have a way of lingering at home. Our own Elsie +has always remained faithful to her parents. + +Johnny had chosen to call himself "old" and "poor." Of course he looked +neither. True, his chestnut hair was beginning to gray; but it made, +unless clipped closer than he always wore it, at least an intimation of +a florid aureole of crisp vigor; and his whole person gave an exudation +of power and prosperity. No sorrow had come to him beyond the death of +his parents--an inevitable loss which he had duly recorded in public. +That record had yet to receive another name--and yet another. + +His wife, who had seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against +him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him--perhaps a more +commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a +life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her +almost a second nature. The order of the day was cooeperation, team-work; +in the grand advance she was no straggler, no malingerer. It was a +matter of pride to keep step with him; she was now beyond the fear which +possibly for the first few years had troubled her--the fear that he, by +word, or look, or even by silence, might hint to her that she was not +fully "keeping up." Johnny himself was now rather heavy; for the regimen +which they were pursuing he had the strength that insured against any +loss of flesh through tax on the nerves. His wife, for her part, looked +rather lean--trained, even trained down. As the wife of Raymond, she +would probably have lapsed by now into pinguitude and sloth--unless +discontent and exasperation had prevented. + +After showing us the private grandeurs of their own estate, they +motored us to the cooerdinated splendors of their club. It had been a +good club--one of the best of its kind--from the start, and now it had +grown bigger and better. Its arcaded porches and its verandas were wide; +its links showed the hand of the expert, yet also the sensitive touch of +the landscape gardener; an orchestra of greater size and merit than is +common in such heedless gatherings played for itself if not for the +gossiping, stirring throng; and people talked golf-jargon (for which I +don't care) and polo (of which I know even less). Though the day was one +in the relatively early spring, things were "going"; temporary backsets +would doubtless ensue--meanwhile get the good out of a clear, fair +afternoon, if but a single one. + +Through all this gay stir the McComases contrived to make themselves +duly felt. Johnny himself was one of the governors, I gathered; as such +he took part in a small, hurried confab in the smoking-room. Whether or +not there was a point in dispute, I do not know; but when he rose and +led me forth with his curved palm under my elbow the matter had been +settled his way, and no ill-feeling left: rather, as I sensed it, a +feeling of relief that some one had promptly and energetically laid a +moot question for once and all. + +His two tall boys I saw walking, with an amiable air of an habituated +understanding, around a billiard-table: "Can you beat them?" asked +Johnny proudly, as we passed the open window. His daughter circulated +confidently, as being almost a member in full and regular standing +herself. She seemed to know intimately any number of girls of her own +age, and even a few lads of seventeen or so--an advantage which our +Elsie, at that stage, never quite enjoyed, and which, due allowance made +for altered conditions, she was somewhat slow in gaining, later. + +And about his wife? Well, the slate appeared to have been wiped--if +there really had been any definite marks upon it. Assuredly no smears +were left to show. Those of the younger generation of seven or eight +years before had used the time and arranged their futures, and the +still younger were pressing into their places--witness Johnny's own +brood. Gertrude McComas was now a self-assured though careful +matron--careful, I thought, not to ask too much of general society; +careful not to notice whether or no she received too little; careful, +most of all, not to let it appear that she _was_ careful. Perhaps it was +this care which made up a part of her general strain--and enabled her to +keep the lithe slenderness of her early figure. + +We came back to town--the three of us--by train. Both of my Elsies were +thoughtful. Certainly we were playing a less brilliant part than the +family we had just left. + + +III + +Meanwhile Albert pursued his studies. Though he had not so far to come +for a short vacation as the McComas young men, he spent the short +vacations at the school. He was at an awkward age, and Raymond, who +could see him with eyes not unduly clouded by affection, felt him to be +an unpromising cub. He was no adornment for any house, and no +satisfying companion for his father. So he passed the Easter week among +his teachers. + +McComas too saw little of Albert. Those months with his mother were +usually worked off at some distant resort, which his stepfather was +often too busy to reach. Only once did he spend any of the allotted time +in McComas's house. This was a fortnight in that grandiose yet tawdry +fabric which had been sacrificed to business, and the occasion was an +illness in the family (not Albert's) which delayed the summer's outing. +McComas had accepted Albert with a large tolerance--at least he was not +annoyed. In fact, the boy's mother, however she may have harassed +Raymond, never (to do her justice) pushed Albert on her second husband. +So, when the juncture arrived,-- + +"Why, yes," Johnny had said, "have him here, of course; and let him stay +as long as you like. He doesn't bother _me_." + +Well, Albert went ahead, doing his Latin, and groping farther into the +dusky penumbra of mathematics. "Why?" he asked; and they explained that +it was the necessary preparation for the university. Albert pondered. He +began to fear that he must continue learning things he didn't want or +need, so that he might go ahead toward learning other things he didn't +want or need. He took a plaintive, discouraged tone in a letter to his +mother; and she--making an exception to her rule--passed along the +protest to McComas. She felt, I suppose, that he would give an answering +note. + +Johnny laughed. He himself cared nothing for study; and he was so +happily constituted, as well as so constantly occupied, that he never +had to take refuge in a book. + +"Oh, well," he said, broadly, "he'll live through it all, and live it +down. I expect Tom and Joe to. The final gains will be in quite another +direction." + +Raymond had heard the same plaint from Albert, and was less pleased. The +boy was clearly to be no student, still less a lover of the arts. +Raymond passed over all thought of old Jehiel, the ruthlessly +acquisitive, and placed the blame on the other grandfather, who was now +in an early dotage after a lifelong harnessing to the stock-ticker. + +"_I_ don't know how he's coming out!" was Raymond's impatient remark, +over one of Albert's letters. "Who knows what _any_ boy is going to be?" + +Albert accepted his school readily enough as a place of residence. He +did not now need, so much as before, his mother's small cares--in fact, +was glad to be relieved from them; nor was he quite advanced enough to +profit from a cautious father's hints and suggestions. I found myself +hoping that Raymond, at the coming stage of Albert's development, might +have as little trouble as I had had over my own boy (with whose early +career I shall not burden you). Yet, after all, fathers may +apprehensively exchange views and cautiously devise methods of approach +only to find their efforts superfluous: so many boys come through +perfectly well, after all. Simply consider, for example, those in our +old singing-class. The only one to occasion any inconvenience was Johnny +McComas, and he was not a member at all. + +The one side of the matter that began to concern Raymond was the money +side. Albert cost at school, and was going to cost more at college. His +father began to economize. For instance, he cut off, this spring, the +contribution which he had been making for years in support of an +organization of reformers that had been working for civic betterment. +These men, considering their small number and their limited resources +had done wonders in raising the tone and quality of the local +administration. The city's reputation, outside, had become respectable. +But a sag had begun to show itself--the relapse that is pretty certain +to follow on an extreme and perhaps overstrained endeavor. The little +band needed money. Raymond was urged to reconsider and to continue--the +upgrade would soon be reached again. Raymond sent, reluctantly, a +smaller amount and asked why the net for contributions was not cast a +little wider. He even suggested a few names. + +Whether he mentioned the name of John W. McComas I do not know, but +McComas was given an opportunity to help. + +"See what they've sent me," he said to me one day on the street. + +He smiled over the urgent, fervid phrases of the appeal. The world, so +far as he was concerned, was going very well. It didn't need +improvement; and if it did, he hadn't the time to improve it. + +"They appear to be losing their grip," he added. "They didn't do very +well last election, anyhow." + +I sensed his reluctance to be associated with a cause that seemed to be +a losing one. + +"Well, I don't know," I said. "I'm giving something myself; and if I can +afford to, you can." + +But he developed no interest. He sent a check absurdly disproportionate +to his capacity (he was embarrassed, I am glad to say, when he mentioned +later the amount); and I incline to think that even this bit was done +almost out of a personal regard for me. + +Raymond cut a part of his own contribution out of Albert's allowance, +and there was better reason than ever why Albert should not take a long +trip for only four or five days at home. + + +IV + +It is tiresome, I know, to read about municipal reform; most of us want +the results and not the process--and some of us not even the results. +And it is no less tiresome to read about investments, unless we are +dealing with some young knight of finance who strives successfully for +his lady's favor and who, successful, lives with her ever after in the +style to which her father has accustomed her. But in the case of a +maladroit man of fifty.... + +I had asked Raymond to call on me with any new scheme that was taking +his attention, and one forenoon he walked in. + +He had an envelope of loose papers. He laid some of them on my desk and +thumbed a few others with an undecided expression. + +"What do you think of this?" he asked. "I've got to have more money, and +here's something that may bring it in." + +It was a speculative industrial affair in Upper Michigan. I saw some +familiar names attached--among them that of John W. McComas, though not +prominently. + +"I'll find out for you," I said. + +"I don't want you to find out from him." + +"I'll find out." + +Raymond fingered his envelope fussily: there was nothing left in it. + +"It's all costing me too much. Extras at that school. That big +house--too big, too expensive. I can't lug it along any farther. Find me +some one to buy it." + +"I'll see," I said. + +I told him about our visit to the club, two or three months before. I +implied, in as delicate and circumambulatory a way as possible, that his +one-time wife, according to my own observations, taken under peculiarly +favorable, because exacting, conditions, was completely accepted. + +"Oh yes," he replied, as if the matter had been settled years ago, and +as if he had long had that sense of it. Yes, he seemed to be saying, the +marriage had made it all right for her, and had soon begun to make it +better for him. Possibly not a "deceived" husband; and no longer so +rawly flagrant a failure as a human companion. + +"Their house is good, I gather," he went on. "There were some plates of +it in the architectural journals. Just how good he doesn't know, I +suppose--and never will." + +"I found him fairly appreciative of it." + +"Possibly--as a financial achievement brought about by his own money." + +"He's learning some of its good points," I declared. + +"There was some talk of having Albert there, just before they went off +to the Yellowstone." He frowned. "Well, this can't go on so many more +years, now." + +I did not quite get Raymond's attitude. He did not want the boy with him +at home. He did not want to meet any extra expenses--and Mrs. McComas +was assuredly paying Albert's way through mid-summer, as well as +eternally buying him clothes. I think that what Raymond wanted--and +wanted but rather weakly--was his own will, whether there was any +advantage in it or not, and wanted that will without payments, charges, +costs. + +I disliked his grudging way, or rather, his balking way, as regarded a +recognition of the liberality of his former wife's husband--for that was +what it came to. + +I returned his prospectus. "I'll look this up. How about that company in +Montana?" I continued. + +"They've passed a dividend. I was counting on something from that +quarter." + +"And how about the factory in Iowa?" + +"That will bring me something next year." + +"Well," I said, doubling back to the matter that had brought him in, +"I'll inquire about this and let you know." + +In the course of a few days I called on McComas. Others were calling. +Others were always calling. If I wanted to see him I should have to +wait. I had expected to wait. I waited. + +When I was finally admitted, he rose and came halfway through his +splendors of upholstery to give me an Olympian greeting. + +"It's brass tacks," I said. "Three minutes will do." + +"Four, if you like." + +"Three. Frankly, very frankly, is this a thing"--here I used the large +page of ornamental letter-press as word-saver--"is this a thing for an +ordinary investor?" + +"Ordinary investor"--that is what I called Raymond. Perhaps I flattered +him unduly. + +"Why," responded McComas, with a grimace, "it's a right enough thing for +the right man--or men. Several of us expect to do pretty well out of +it." + +"'Several'? How about the rank outsider?" + +"Anybody that _you_ know sniffing?" + +"Yes." + +"Who?" + +"Well--Prince." + +"H'm." Johnny pondered; became magnanimous. "Well, it ain't for him. +Pull his nose away. I don't want his money." + +He knew what he had taken. He may have had a prescience of what he was +yet to take. He could afford an interim of generosity. + + +V + +A year or so went on, and we met the McComases at a horse-show. Once +more it had become distinguished to have horses, and to exhibit them--in +the right place. Althea was with her parents; so was the survivor of the +stalwart twins. + +Johnny had taken the blow hard. That a son of his, one so strong and +robust, a youth on whom so much time and thought and care and money had +been lavished to fit him for the world, should go down and go out (and +in such a sudden, trivial fashion)--oh, it was more than he felt he +could endure. But he was built on a broad plan; his nature, when the +test came, opened a wide door to the assimilation of experiences and +offered a wide margin for adjustment to their jars. His other son, the +full equal of the lost one, still survived and was present to-day; and +Johnny, grandly reconciled, was himself again. + +Althea had taken the interval to make sure about her hair-ribbon and her +skirts. The ribbons had been pronounced outgrown and superfluous, and +had been banished. The suitability of longer skirts had been felt, and +had been acted upon. Althea was now almost a young lady, and a very +pretty one. + +I say it without bitterness. The beauties of nature--those trifles that +make the great differences--are indeed unequally distributed among human +creatures. Not all girls are pretty; not all attractive; not all +equipped to make their way. No. + +You will assume for yourselves the greenery of grass and trees, the slow +cumuli in the afternoon sky, the lively, brightly dressed throngs on +lawns and verandas, and the horses; yes, even those were present, +somewhere or other. + +Gertrude McComas was of the crowd; suitably dressed (or, perhaps, +attired), a little less spare than once, and somehow conveying the +impression, if unobtrusively, that her presence was necessary for the +completeness of the function. She was pleasant with Althea, who had a +horse on her mind and a number on her back. + +Gertrude had returned from the North with Althea and Albert, a week +before Albert's allotted time with her was up, so that they might all be +a part of this occasion. Albert was now taller than his father, had +begun to gather up a little assertiveness on reaching the end of his +preparatory days, had taken his examinations, and was understood to be +within a month or so of college. + +I cannot say that Althea's skirts, however much thought she had given +them, were long to-day. The only skirts she wore were the skirts of her +riding-coat. The rest of her was boots and trousers; and she carried a +little quirt with which she flecked the dust from her nethers, now and +again, rather smartly. + +Albert looked--obviously envious, and obviously perturbed. His various +knockings from pillar to post had left him without horse and without +horsemanship. And here was a young feminine (almost a relative, in a +sense; well, was she, or was she not?) who was dressed as he (with some +slight differences) might have been dressed, and who was doing (or was +about to do) some of the things that he himself (as he was now keenly +conscious) had always hankered to do.... How was he to take it all?--the +difference, the likeness, the closeness, the distance.... + +And we--my wife and I--became suddenly, poignantly, even bitterly aware +that our Elsie, beside us in her tailor-made, had never been on a horse +in her life--and was now perhaps too old to make a good beginning. + +After a little while Althea was carried away for her "entry" or "event," +or whatever they properly call it--for I am no sportsman. Some small +section of the crowd interested itself about the same time--at least got +between us and the proceedings. We saw little or nothing--just heads, +hats and parasols. All I know is that, in a few moments, Althea +reappeared--I think she had leaped something. Her father was by her +side, vastly proud and happy. Her mother (as I shall say for short) +arrived from somewhere, with a gratified smile. Her big brother +presently drew up alongside on a polo-pony, and gave her a big, +flat-handed pat in the middle of her placard, and a handsome young +woman, who was pointed out to us as the wife he had married in February, +during our fortnight at Miami, reached up to her bridle-hand and gave it +a squeeze. And there was a deep fringe of miscellaneous friends, +acquaintances and rivals. + +"What do you think of our daughter, now!" asked Johnny, loudly and +generally, as he lifted Althea down. He looked about as if to sweep +together the widest assemblage of praises and applause. Many flocked; +many congratulated; but still further tribute must be levied. McComas +caught sight of Albert. The young fellow stood on the edge of the thing, +staring, embarrassed, shaken to his centre. + +"Here, you, Albert!" Johnny cried; "come over and shake hands with the +winner!" + +And meanwhile, Raymond, off by himself somewhere or other, I suppose, +may have been studying how in the world he was ever going to put Albert +through Yale. + + +VI + +Business once more! + +It ought to be barred. I get enough of it in my daily routine without +having it intrude here. Business should do no more than provide the +platform and the scenic background for the display of young love, hope +and beauty. But here we have to deal with the affairs of a worried and +incompetent man half way through his fifties. + +Raymond came in one morning, on my summons. His manner was depressed; it +was becoming habitually so. I tried to cheer him with indifferent +topics,--among them the horse-show, which I saw so unsatisfactorily and +which I have described so inadequately. He had already heard about it +from Albert, and he felt no relish for the friendliness Johnny McComas +had displayed on that occasion. + +"Trying to get _him_, too?" was Raymond's comment. + +"Oh, I wouldn't quite say _that_...." + +"I have a letter from his mother. She wants to know about college." + +"Well, how _are_ things?" + +"Oh, I don't know; poor." + +"That Iowa company?" + +"Next year." + +"Again?" + +"Yes--next year; as usual." + +"Well, I have news for you." + +"Good?" he asked, picking up a little. + +"That depends on how you look at it. I have a buyer for your house." + +"Thank God!" + +"Don't hurry to thank God. Perhaps you will want to thank the Devil." + +Raymond's face fell. "You don't mean that _he_--on top of everything +else--has come forward to--?" + +"My friend! my friend! It isn't that at all. 'He' has nothing to do with +it. Quite another party." + +And it was. A Mr. Gluckstein, a sort of impresario made suddenly rich by +a few seasons with fiddlers and prima donnas, was the man. He was +willing, he said,--and I paid the news out as evenly and considerately +as I could,--he was willing to take the house and assume the +mortgage--but he asked a bonus of five thousand dollars for doing it. + +"The scoundrel!" groaned Raymond, his face twisted by contemptuous rage. +"The impudent scoundrel!" + +"Possibly so. But that is his offer--and the only one. And it is his +best." + +Raymond sat with his eyes on the floor. He was afraid to let me see his +face. He hated the house--it was an incubus, a millstone; but-- + +He visibly despaired. "What shall I do about Albert's college, now?" he +muttered presently. + +He seemed to have passed at a bound beyond the stage of sale and +transfer. The odious property was off his hands--and every hope of a +spare dollar had gone with it. + +"His mother writes--" began Raymond. + +"Yes?" + +"She tells me--Well, her father died last month, it seems, and she is +expecting something out of his estate...." + +"Estate? Is there one?" + +"Who can say? A man in that business! There might be something; there +might be nothing or less. And it might take a year or more to get it." + +"And if there is anything?" + +"She says she will look after Albert's first year or two. I was about to +refuse, but I expect I shall have to listen now." + +He was silent. Then he broke out:-- + +"But there won't be. That old woman with her water-waves and her +wrinkles is still hanging on; even if there should be anything, she +would be the one to get most of it. I know her--she would snatch it +all!" + +"Listen, Raymond," I said; "you had better let _me_ help you here." + +"I don't want you to. There must be some way to manage." + +He fell into thought. + +"I doubt if she can do anything, herself. Whatever she did would come +through him in the end. You say he likes Albert?" He was silent again. +"I don't want to meet either of them--but I would about as soon meet him +as her." + +I saw that he was nerving himself for another _scene a faire_. Well, it +would be less trying than the first one. If his sense of form, his +_flair_ for fatalism, still persisted, ease was out of the question and +no surrogate could serve. + +Perhaps, after all, there had been nothing between those two. Anyway, in +the general eye the marriage had made everything right. She was +accepted, certainly. And as certainly he had lived down, if he had ever +possessed it, the reputation of a hapless husband. + +He wrote to her in a non-committal way--a letter which left loopholes, +room for accommodation. Her reply suggested that he call at the bank; +she would pass on the word. He told me he would try to do so. I saw the +impudent concert-monger was to have his house. + +And so, one forenoon, at eleven or so, Raymond, after some +self-drivings, reached the bank; by appointment, as he understood. +Through the big doors; up the wide, balustraded stairway--it was the +first time he had ever been in the place. He was well on the way to the +broad, square landing, when some lively clerks or messengers, who had +been springing along behind him, all at once slackened their pace and +began to skirt the paneled marble walls. A number of prosperous +middle-aged and elderly men were coming down together in a compact +group. It seemed as if some directors' meeting was in progress--in +progress from one office, or one building, to another. In the middle of +the group was John W. McComas. + +He was absorbed, abstracted. Raymond, like some of the other up-farers, +had gained the landing, and like them now stood a little to one side. +McComas looked out at him with no particular expression and indeed with +no markedness of attention. + +"How do you do?" he said indifferently. + +"I'm pretty well," said Raymond dispiritedly. + +"And that was all!" he reported next day in a high state of indignation. +"Don't suppose I shall try it again!" + +But a careless Gertrude had failed to inform her husband of the +appointment. She had been busy, or he had been away from home.... + +"Go once more," I counseled, I pleaded. + +A note came to him from McComas--a decent, a civil. Come and talk things +over--that was its purport. He went. + +McComas, as you can guess, was very bland, very expansive, very +magnanimous (to his own sense). "I _like_ Albert!" he declared heartily. +But he did little to cloak the fact that it was his own money which was +to carry the boy through college. + +Raymond was in the depths for a month. After Gluckstein had got his deed +for the house and Albert had packed his trunk for the East, he felt that +now indeed he had lost wife, home and son. + + + + +PART VIII + +I + + +Before leaving his house for good and all, Raymond spent a dismal +fortnight in going over old papers--out-of-date documents which once had +interested his father and grandfather, books, diaries and memoranda +which had occupied his own youthful days: the slowly deposited, +encumbering sediment of three generations, long in one place. There were +several faded agreements with the signature of the ineffable individual +who had married into the family, had received a quit-claim to those +suburban acres, and had then, at a point of stress, refused to give them +back. There were sheaves of old receipted bills--among them one for the +set of parlor furniture in the best (or the worst) style of the Second +Empire. There were drafts of Raymond's early compositions--his first +attempts at the essay and the short story; there was an ancient, heavily +annotated Virgil (only six books), and there was a sheepskin algebra in +which he had taken, by himself, a post-school course as a means of +intellectual tonic, with extra problems dexterously worked out and +inserted on bits of blue paper.... + +"I filled the furnace seven times," he said to me, laconically. + +I myself felt the strain of it all. It is less wearing to move every two +or three years, as most of us do, than to move but once--near the end of +a long life, of a succession of lives. + +I never asked what Mr. Gluckstein thought of the orchestrion. + +Raymond went to live at a sort of private hotel. Here he read and wrote. +He carried with him a set of little red guide-books, long, long since +out of date, and he restudied Europe in the light of early memories. He +also subscribed to a branch of a public library in the vicinity--a +vicinity that seemed on the far edge of things. However, the tendency of +the town has always been centrifugal. Many of our worthies, if they have +held on to life long enough, have had to make the same disconcerting +trek. + +From this retreat Raymond occasionally issued to concerts and +picture-exhibitions. I do not know that he was greatly concerned for +them; but they carried on a familiar tradition and gave employment still +to a failing momentum. + +From this same retreat there would issue, about the Christmas season, a +few watercolors on Italian subjects. If they were faint and feeble, I +shall not say so. We ourselves have one of them--an indecisive view of +the ruins in the Roman Forum. It is not quite the Forum I recall; but +then, as we know, the Roman Forum, for the past half-century, has +altered almost from year to year. + +Letters reached him occasionally from Albert the freshman. They might +well have come from Albert the sophomore. Raymond showed me one of them +on an evening when I had called to see him in his new quarters. + +He was comfortable enough and snug. On the walls and shelves were books +and pictures that I remembered seeing in his boyhood bedroom. + +"I like it here," he said emphatically. And in truth it was the den of a +born bachelor--one who had discovered himself too late. + +Well, Raymond passed me Albert's letter. He showed it to me, not with +pride, but (as was evident from the questioning eye he kept on my face) +with a view to learning what I thought of it. He was asking a verdict, +yet shrinking from it. + +Albert was rather cocky; also, rather restless--I wondered if he would +last to _be_ a sophomore. And he displayed little of the consideration +due a father. Clearly, Raymond, as a parent, had been weighed and found +wanting. Albert's ideal stood high in another quarter, and his life's +ambition might soon drive him in a direction the reverse of academic. + +"How does it strike you?" asked Raymond, as I sat mulling over Albert's +sheets. + +I searched my mind for some non-committal response. + +"Well," Raymond burst out, "he needn't respect _me_ if he doesn't admire +_him_!" + + +II + +Albert's response to McComas at the horse-show had not been noticeably +prompt or adroit, but he cast about manfully for words and presently was +able to voice his appreciation of Althea's feat (as it was regarded) and +to congratulate her upon it. Johnny McComas was not at all displeased. +Albert had not been light-handed and graceful, but he developed (under +this sudden stress) a sturdy, downright mode of speech which showed +sincerity if not dexterity. The square-standing, straight-speaking +farm-lad--straight-speaking, if none too ready--was sounding an +atavistic note caught from his great-grandfather back in York State. + +"Stuff in him!" commented Johnny. "It's a wonder, but there is. Must be +his mother." + +Albert made no particular impression, however, on Althea herself. A +dozen other young fellows had been more demonstrative and more fluent. +He simply slid over the surface of her mind and fell away again. She had +known him--intermittently--for years as a somewhat inexpressive boy; +now, as a potential gallant, he was negligible, as compared with others. +But Albert, speaking in a sense either specific or general, did not mean +to remain negligible. + +He soon forgot most of the details of the day at the horse-show. He had +hardly a greater affinity for sport than his father had had. He began +his sophomore year with no interest in athletics. The compulsory +gymnasium-work bored him. He made no single team--put forth not the +least effort to make one. The football crowd, the baseball crowd, even +the tennis crowd, gave him up and left him alone. + +Yet his bodily energies and his mental ambitions were waxing daily; his +passions too. There must be an outlet for all this vigor--business, or +matrimony, or war. In one short twelvemonth he compassed all three. + +By the end of Albert's second year, the day had come when a +self-respecting young man of fortune and position found it hard if he +must confess: "I have taken all yet given nothing." The Great War waged +more furiously than ever, and came more close. The country had first +said, "You may," and, later, "You must." Albert did not wait for the +"must." He closed his year a month or so in advance--as he had done once +before--and enrolled in a college-unit for service abroad. + +Raymond gave his consent--a matter of form, a futility. In fact, Albert +enrolled first and asked (or advised) later. His mother, of a mixed +mind, would have interposed an objection. McComas hushed her down. "Let +him go. He has the makings of a man. Don't cut off his best chance." + +McComas had a right to speak. Tom McComas was going too, and going with +his father's warm approval. If he could leave a young wife and a +three-year-old boy, need a young bachelor student be held back? + +Albert came West for a good-bye. His father held his hand and gave him a +long scrutiny--part of the time with eyes wide open, part of the time +with eyes closed to a fine, inquiring, studious line. But he never saw +what there was to see. In his own body there was not one drop of martial +blood; in his being not an iota of the bellicose spirit. Why men fight, +even why boys fight--all this had been a mystery which he must take on +faith, with little help from the fisticuffs and brawls of school-days, +or even from the gigantic, agonizing closing-in of whole peoples, now +under way. + +Yet Albert understood, and meant to take his share. + +Who, indeed, as Raymond had once asked petulantly, could know what a boy +was going to be? + +When Althea saw Albert in khaki, she _saw_ him: this time no +indifference, no fusing him with the crowd, no letting him fade away +unnoticed. If he had shaken before her on her hurdle-taker, she now +shook before him in his brown regimentals. It was as if, in an instant, he +had bolted from their familiar--their sometimes over-familiar--atmosphere. +He confused, he perturbed her: he was so like, yet so different; so close, +yet so remote. Was he a relative, of sorts--a relative in some loose +sense; or was he a strange young hero, with his face set toward yet +stranger scenes...? + +"Come," said her father, who was close by, between the horse-block and +the syringa-bushes, "Albert isn't the only soldier on the battle-field. +Look at Tom, here!" + +Althea turned her eyes dutifully toward her stalwart brother, who +humorously put up his stiffened fingers to the stiff brim of his hat; +and then she looked back at Albert. + + +III + +McComas's bank, like others, put its office-machinery at the disposal of +the Government, when the first war-loan was in the making. It seemed a +small matter, at the beginning, but administrative organization was +taxed and clerical labors piled up hugely as the big, slow event moved +along through its various stages. This work in itself came almost to +seem an adequate contribution to the cause; surely in the mere +percentage of interest offered there was little to appeal to the +financial public, except perhaps the depositors of savings banks. +McComas himself felt no promptings to subscribe to this loan; but his +directors thought that a reasonable degree of participation was +"indicated." The bank's name went down, with the names of some others; +and the clerks who had been working over hours on the new and exacting +minutiae of the undertaking were given a chance to divert their savings +toward the novel securities. The bank displayed the Nation's flag, and +the flags of some of the allies. It all made a busy corner. McComas +thought of his son in khaki, and felt himself warming daily as a +patriot. + +"We can do them up," he declared. The war, with him, was still largely a +matter of financial pressure. The pressure, even if exerted at long +range, was bound to tell. Many of "our boys" would never get "over +there" at all. They were learning how to safeguard our country's future +within our country itself. + +His wife, who had been flitting from veranda to veranda in their +pleasant suburban environment, and been doing, with other ladies of her +circle, some desultory work for the wounded soldiers of the future, now +came down to the centre of the town and took up the work in good +earnest. She saw Tom McComas as a seasoned adult who could look after +himself, but her own Albert was still a boy. It was easy to see him +freezing, soaking, falling, lying in distress. She busied herself behind +a great plate-glass window on a frequented thoroughfare--a window heaped +with battered helmets and emptied shells that drew the idle curiosity or +the poignant interest of the passer-by. Bandages, sweaters, iodine-tubes +filled her thoughts and her hands. And Althea, in company with several +sprightly and entertaining young girls of her own set, began to pick up +some elementary notions in nursing. + +"Why, it's the most delightfully absorbing thing I've ever done!" she +declared. A new world was dawning--a red world that not all of us have +been fated to meet so young. + +Raymond Prince saw all these preparations and took them as a spectacle. +He was now frankly but an onlooker in life, and he gazed at big things +from their far rim. He had no spare funds to put into federal hands, and +felt by no means able to afford the conversion of any of his few +remaining investments with a loss of nearly half his present returns. He +viewed a patriotic parade or two from the curbstone and attended now +and then some patriotic meeting in the public parks--a flag-raising, for +example. On these occasions he preferred to stand at some remove, so +that it would be unnecessary to raise his hat: the requirement of a +formal salute made him distressingly self-conscious. Yet he was +displeased if other men, no nearer, failed to lift theirs; and he would +be indignant when young fellows, engaged in games near by, gave the +exercises no heed at all. + +In one of the parades the flag of France went by. This was a picturesque +and semi-exotic event; it stirred some memories of early days abroad, +and Raymond, with an effort, did, stiffly and with an obvious (even an +obtrusive) self-consciousness, manage to get off his hat. A highly vocal +young man alongside looked at this cold and creaking manoeuvre with +disapproval, even disgust. + +"Can't you holler?" he asked. + +No, Raymond could not "holler." The dead hand of conscious propriety was +upon him, checking any momentum that might lead to a spontaneous +expression of patriotic feeling. The generous human juices could not +run--could not even get started. When he said good-bye to Albert, it was +not as to a son, nor even to a friend's son. Albert himself might have +objected to any emotional expression that was too clearly to be seen; +but he would have welcomed one which, cloaked in an unembarrassing +obscurity, might at least have been felt. Johnny McComas frankly let +himself "go," not only with Tom, but with Albert too. Albert could not +but think within himself that it was all somewhat overdone; he was a bit +abashed, even if not quite shamefaced. But the recollection of Johnny's +warm hand-clasp and vibrant voice sometimes came to comfort him, in camp +across the water, at times when the picture of his own father's chill +adieux brought little aid. + + +IV + +A few brief months ended the foreign service of both our young men. +Albert came home invalided, and Tom McComas along with others, lay dead +between the opposing lines of trenches. His father would not, at first, +credit the news. His son's very strength and vigor had helped build up +his own exuberant optimism. It simply could not be; his son, his only +remaining son, a happy husband, a gratified parent.... But the truth +bore in, as the truth will, and McComas had his days of +rebellious--almost of blasphemous--protest. The proud monument at +Roselands was taking a cruel toll. His other son was commemorated on the +third side of its base; but though a fresh unfrayed flag waved for +months over turf below which no one lay, it was long before that great +granite block came to betray to the world this latest and cruelest +bereavement. + +Albert, whose injuries had made him appear as likely to be a useless +piece on the board for longer than the army surgeons thought worth +while, was sent back home and made his convalescence under the care of +his mother; within her house, indeed--for his father had no quarters to +offer him. Among McComas's flower-beds and garden-paths he enjoyed the +ministrations of a physician other and better than any that practices on +those fields of hate--one who complemented the prosaic physical cares +required for the body with an affluent stream of healing directed toward +both mind and heart. He had come back to be a hero to Althea, with +evidences of his heroism graved on his own bruised form. + +"Hasn't he been wonderful!" said Althea to her girl friends; and Albert +volunteered few concrete facts that might qualify or detract from her +ideal. + +Those few months comprised his contribution to the cause. He mended more +rapidly than might have been expected, and soon began to feel the +resurgence of those belligerencies which are proper to the nature of the +healthy young male. But his belligerencies were not at all militaristic. +He had seen war at short range, knew what it was, and desired it no +more. He meant to let loose his energies, as soon as might be, in that +other warfare, business; it would be after the manner of a +great-grandfather of whom a tradition persisted, and after the close +pattern of a McComas still before his eyes. A hero, if they wished; but +a hero with money in his pocket. + +Meanwhile, McComas looked at his grandson and writhed. So many openings, +so many things to be done; yet what future aid had he to count on for +carrying along his line and for reaping the opportunities in his field? +A child of four, in rompers, pushing a little wheelbarrow of pebbles +along garden-paths. The years dragged. It was all too great an irony. + +He sent for Albert. Albert still limped a little, but it was not to be +for long. + +"You've done enough for your country," he declared with blunt emphasis. +"Now do something for me. You're almost well?" + +"I think so." + +"You want to pitch in?" + +"I do." + +"You want to amount to something?" continued McComas, pausing on the +edge of an invidious bit of characterization. + +"Of course." + +"You would like to come with me?" + +"Yes." Surely his own father could not help him to a future. + +"Well, take your choice. What do you want? Bank?" + +But Albert had heard something about banks. Bank clerks, in these +close-knit days, when anybody who fell out of the lock-step was lost, +were but a sort of financial militia. Even if he were pushed along with +the friendliest zeal, it might be years before he reached the place and +the end desired. Nor had he much more fondness for growing up under the +eye of McComas than under that of his own father. + +"Bank?" repeated McComas. + +"No." + +McComas grinned. It was the grin he used when greatly pleased. + +"One of those Western concerns?" + +"Yes," said Albert; "send me West." + +When Raymond heard that Albert had cast in his lot with McComas and +meant soon to leave for Colorado, he winced. Albert, to him, was still a +boy, and this term in the West but another kind of schooling. "Just as +his mother tried to influence him before," said Raymond to me bitterly, +"so McComas will influence him now." And I could not deny that McComas +had the whip hand. The unintermittency of business correspondence, the +cogency of a place on the payroll.... + +No, it was not to be denied that Raymond had lost Albert finally. + +And Althea went to the train, to see him off--as to another war. + + +V + +"Finally"--perhaps I have used the word too soon. + +I dropped in on Raymond, one evening, at his private hotel. It was about +four months after Albert's departure for the West. His quarters seemed +as snugly comfortable as ever, and as completely adapted to his +ultimately discovered personality and its peculiar requirements. Raymond +master of a big house! Raymond leading a public life! + +But he himself was perturbed. It was a letter from Albert--it was two or +three letters, in fact. + +"He says he is going to marry her." + +"Her?" + +"Althea. Althea McComas." + +Albert, in the West, had done well. He had taken hold immediately, +decisively. The initiative which would never have developed under his +father had been liberated during his war service and was now mounting to +a still higher pitch among the mountains. + +"He is going to do," McComas had told me, after the second month. "He is +a wonder," he had said, later. + +Be that as it may. McComas was doubtless inclined to the favorable view. +He had determined in advance that Albert was to succeed. Albert was +meeting, successfully, known expectations of success--as a young man +may. + +"He started so well," said his father. "And now...." + +"And now?" + +"Now he wants to marry the daughter of a stable-boy!" + +"Raymond," I said; "drop the 'stable-boy.' That was never true; and if +it were it would have no relevancy here and now." + +"I should say not! Why, Albert--" + +"You have told him? He knows your--He knows the--the legend?" + +"He does. And as you see, it makes no difference to him." + +"Why should it? Why should he care for early matters that were over and +past long years before he was born? He sees what he sees. He feels what +he feels." + +"He feels McComas." + +"Why shouldn't he? Who wouldn't?" + +Raymond relapsed into a moody silence. I saw, presently, that he was +trying to break from it. He had another consideration to offer. + +"And then," he began, "about--his mother. He must have +understood--something. He must know--by now." + +"Know?" I returned. "If he does, he has the advantage over all the rest +of us. _I_ don't 'know.' _You_ don't 'know.' Neither does anybody else. +Another old matter--as well rectified as society and its usages can +manage, and best left alone." + +"Well, it's--it's indelicate. Albert ought to feel that." + +"Raymond!" I protested. "We must leave it to the young to smooth over +the rough old places and to salve the aching old sores. That's their +great use and function." + +"Not Albert's," he said stubbornly. "I don't want him to do it, and I +don't want it done in that way." + +Another silence. I could see that he was gathering force for still +another objection. + +"It's a desertion," said the undying egoist. "It's a piece of treachery. +It's a going over to the enemy." + +"If you mean McComas, Albert went over months ago. And he doesn't seem +to have lost anything by doing so," I ventured to add. + +"This marriage would clinch it, would confirm it. I should lose him at +last, and completely, just as I have lost--everything." + +"Raymond," I could scarcely keep from saying, "you deceive yourself. You +have really never cared for Albert at all. The only concern here is your +own pride--the futile working of a will that is too weak to get its own +way." + +But I kept silence, and he continued the silence. Yet I felt that he +was gathering force for the greatest objection of all. + +"I have heard them spoken of," he said, after a little, "as--as brother +and sister. For them to marry! It's unseemly." + +"Raymond!" I protested again, with even more vigor than before. "Why +must you say a thing like that?" + +"The same father and mother--now. Living together--going about together +as members of one family.... They did, you know." + +"Yes, for a few weeks in the year. 'One family'? What is the mere label? +Nothing. What is the real situation? Everything. Of blood-relationship +not a trace. Why, even cousins marry--but here are two strains +absolutely different.... Have you," I asked, "have you brought up this +point with--Albert?" + +Raymond glanced at the letters. + +"You have! And he says what I say!" + +Raymond put the letters away. + +Albert had doubtless said much more--and said it with the vigor of +indignant youth. + + +VI + +At a wedding the father of the bridegroom need not be conspicuous--least +of all when the wedding takes place in a church. He may avoid, better +than at a home wedding, too close contact with the various units of the +bridal party. In view of such considerations, Raymond Prince was able to +be present, with discomfort minimized, at his son's marriage. + +We attended, too, of course. My wife has a woman's fondness for +weddings--and so has our Elsie. + +It came in June. The church was _the_ church--the church with the elms +and ash-trees around it, the triangular lawn with the hydrangeas and +elderberry-bushes blossoming here and there, and the gardens and +plantations of private wealth looking across from all sides; the church +where everybody who is anybody gets married as a matter of course--at +that time of year; the church which has plenty of room for limousines on +both sides of its converging streets, and on a third cross-street close +by; the church which has the popular and sympathetic rector, who has +known you ever since you were a boy (or girl), the competent organist, +and the valiant surpliced choir (valiant though small); the church +which, under its broad squat tower and low spire, possesses, about its +altar-rail, room for many palms and rubber-plants and for as many +bridesmaids and ushers as the taste of the high contracting parties may +require:--a space reached by a broad flight of six or seven steps, and +wide enough for any deployment, high enough for the whole assemblage to +see, and grand enough (with its steps and all) to make a considerable +effect when the first notes of the Wedding March sound forth and the +newly wedded couple walk down and out into married life. + +"Be married in your uniform!" Johnny McComas had said effusively. + +"Well, I'm not in the service, now...." replied Albert. + +"You have been, haven't you? Haven't you?" Johnny repeated, as if there +could be two answers. + +"Why, I was only a private...." Albert submitted. + +"So were lots of other good fellows." + +"It's soiled," said Albert. "There's a stain on the shoulder." + +"All the better. We've done something for the country. Let those people +know it." + +So Albert walked down the aisle in khaki. + +Althea was in white--my wife named the material expertly. She wore a +long veil. There were flower-girls, too,--my wife knew their names. + +"She's the most beautiful bride I ever saw!" my wife declared. "This is +the most beautiful wedding I ever attended!" She always says that. + +Johnny McComas was in white, too. As he stood beside the bridal pair he +seemed almost too festive, too estival, too ebullient for this poor +earth of ours. His wife, whose costume I will not describe and whose +state of mind I shall not explore, showed a subdued sedateness--though a +glad--which restored the balance. + +Raymond Prince saw the ceremony from one of the back pews. If he +attended the out-of-door reception at the house, it must have been but +briefly: I quite missed him there. For him the wedding proper had been +less a ceremony than a parade. I can fancy how he resented the +organist's grand outburst and the triumphal descent (undeniably +effective) of the bridal party over those six or seven steps. Again he +was an unregarded and negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's +hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder--the one +with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, +taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said Johnny's action. + +And it was as an unregarded and negligible spectator--now his permanent +role--that Raymond Prince took the slow train back to town. + + +THE END + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +The Riverside Press +CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS +U . S . A + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Stairs, by Henry B. 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