CHAPTER VI
The fact that Enoch Crane returned Ebner Ford’s call a week later, proved that whatever his opinion might be of his neighbor, he felt in duty bound to return his visit. In matters of this kind Enoch was as punctilious as an ambassador. This man, whom strangers put down as crusty, cold, crabbed, and uncompanionable, could not be accused of being a snob or a boor. It may be further said that he decided to call on Ford purely out of self-respect for himself—in what he conceived to be the well-bred thing to do. He who had been capable of opening his door wide to his unwelcome visitor, had waved him courteously to the comfort of his favorite chair, had listened to his cheap and overfamiliar talk, and had explained to him as politely as he could that he had a pressing engagement, pursued, nevertheless, his code of manners in accordance with what he considered to be his duty as a gentleman under unfortunate obligations of the kind. Enoch might easily have barred his door to Ford forever, and thus have banished the overneighborly promoter and his worthless laundry stock from his mind. The memory of Ford’s visit had not altogether ceased to irritate him. There were moments, however, as he chanced to recall it, when his broader mind and higher intelligence saw its humorous side.
One afternoon, as he was sitting smoking a light Havana in the front room of the Manhattan Club—a favorite club of Enoch’s, since it was but a short walk from the top floor of Waverly Place—he broke out in a broad grin, and rubbed his stubborn chin.
“What cheek that fellow had!” he exclaimed half aloud. “He’s insufferable.” Then he began to laugh softly to himself, and as he laughed Ford’s calm effrontery seemed all the more amusing.
“I’ll go down and call on him to-morrow afternoon,” he muttered, and straightway made a note of it in a small, well-thumbed leather memorandum-book, which he invariably carried in his vest pocket, next to his reading-glasses. Had any one chanced to glance into this little book, filled with interesting engagements, they would have read the complete diary of Enoch’s daily life. The leaf he had turned to ran as follows:
Thursday: Dinner of the Society of Mechanical Research.Saturday: Geographical Society.Friday: Dinner to Commander Nelson.Saturday: Meeting at Century.Tuesday: Rear-Admiral Mason to lunch—Daly’s—Union Club.Sunday: Joseph Jefferson’s birthday.
Thursday: Dinner of the Society of Mechanical Research.Saturday: Geographical Society.Friday: Dinner to Commander Nelson.Saturday: Meeting at Century.Tuesday: Rear-Admiral Mason to lunch—Daly’s—Union Club.Sunday: Joseph Jefferson’s birthday.
Monday afternoon was free, however, and it was here he jotted down “Ford.”
At five o’clock Monday, Ebner Ford answered Enoch’s knock at his door in his carpet slippers and shirt-sleeves, both of which he apologized for, recovered an alpaca office coat from Mrs. Ford’s bedroom closet,retained the slippers, declared he had just had a nap after a heavy business day, regretted his stepdaughter was out, singing up-town at a tea, and assured his visitor that his better half would be dressed to receive him in just a minute.
“Damn glad to see you,” said Ford, straightening his white tie with a nervous wrench in the folding-bed mirror. “Sort of missed you, Crane. Busy, I suppose? Well, we’re all busy. The duller business is, the busier I get. Common sense, ain’t it? ‘Early bird gets the worm,’ as the feller said. Come to think of it, most of my big deals in life have come from gittin’ up early—gittin’ after ’em—gittin’ after the other feller before he gits after you.” Ford winked his left eyelid at Enoch. “When you’ve got as many irons in the fire as I have, Crane,” he declared, “it don’t do to let ’em get cold. Set down, won’t you, and make yourself at home.”
So far it had not occurred to him to offer his guest a seat.
“Take that there rocker,” he said with insistence; “best in the market. Sid Witherall made that rocker. You know the Witherall brothers, I suppose; big lumber people up-State; slapped right into the furniture business as easy as slidin’ off a log. That’s one of Sid’s patents. Spring balance, you see, keeps her rockin’. Sid made a heap of money out of that contrivance. Sells ’em like hot cakes. Just the thing for porch or shady nook, country or seaside, an ornament to the home and a joy to old and young. Well, say—whenit comes to advertisin’, Sid’s about as cute as they make ’em, regular persuader in print. Though if I do say it, Crane, he’ll have to hop along some to beat our latest prospectus of the U. F. L. A., Limited. Cast your eye overthat, neighbor!” he exclaimed, jerking a circular from a bundle on his roll-top desk, fresh from the printer’s. He handed it to Enoch with a triumphant air.
“Thank you,” said Enoch quietly, as he accepted the proffered rocker. He put on his reading-glasses, and began to peruse the latest circular of the United Family Laundry Association with grim resignation, Ford, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, waiting in silence for him to finish.
“Pretty neat, ain’t it?” he declared, watching Enoch as he read on. “Gets at the customer first crack out of the box with a hearty handshake, inspires confidence at low rates. That there line,” he explained, pointing with a long finger to: “Don’t damn your shirts if you find they don’t fit when they come back from the wash. Damn the laundry. We guarantee no profanity in our work.” “That line’s mine, Crane.”
“I might have guessed so,” said Enoch, glancing up at the promoter over the fine gold rims of his spectacles. “You seem to have been born, Mr. Ford, with a—er—what—shall I say?—an inborn talent—to—er—catch the public.”
“Been so since I was a boy,” declared Ford with enthusiasm. “Always seemed to come natural to me. Why, Crane, I warn’t but just turned sixteen when Iwas out for myself on the road makin’ sometimes as high as a hundred and fifty dollars a week sellin’ ‘The Elixir of Youth.’ Take it along up Lake Champlain and down the Vermont side during fair-time; why, them ’way-backs would crowd up and slap out a dollar for a bottle quick as a trout takes a grasshopper.”
“Harmless, I hope?” remarked Enoch.
“Harmless!” Ford grinned and scratched his head. “Well, Crane, I wasn’t takin’ any chances. A little Epsom salts and brook water, tinctured up with port wine never hurt ’em any, I guess. Then, of course, they had a dollar’s worth of excitement in waitin’ to get young. Used to throw in a mirror and a pocket-comb with every three-bottle sale.”
“A hundred and fifty dollars a week! Ah, you don’t tell me!” exclaimed Enoch slowly, squaring about in the rocker and scrutinizing Ford sternly.
“That’s what it amounted to, my friend—clean velvet profit—from Monday to Saturday night. Not so bad for a youngster of sixteen, was it? I used to do a lot of talkin’ then. I had to.”
“Naturally you needed a good rest Sundays,” intervened Enoch coldly.
“Oh! Sundays, of course I had to close down the show. But I was pretty light-fingered on the cornet in those days, and when I struck a fresh town Sundays I used to lead the church choir. Nothing like a cornet to fill a meetin’-house. That always netted me a five-dollar note. I tell daughter she must have somehow inherited her musical talent from me.”
“Inherited?” remarked Enoch dryly.
“Well, of course, not exactly—inherited—I being her stepfather; but anyway,” he laughed, “music runs in the family. Take Mrs. Ford, for instance, never took a lesson in her life, but she certainly can play the piano.”
“Now, Ebner,” protested a voice behind Enoch’s chair.
Mrs. Ford, red from dressing, heralded by the faint rustle of a new lavender-silk dress, and a strong odor of violet perfume, swept effusively into the room.
“Well, Mr. Crane!” exclaimed that round little woman. (Mrs. Ford was really round all over. There were no angles.) “You don’t know how overjoyed we are to see you; how simply delighted!”
“My wife, Crane,” Ford endeavored to explain. She put forth a plump hand to Enoch as he rose from the rocker. “Ebner has so often spoken of you,” she burst out.
“Delighted to meet you, madam,” said Enoch. “I regret not having the double pleasure of seeing your daughter. Your husband tells me Miss Preston is out singing at a musicale.”
“At a tea, Mr. Crane,” declared Mrs. Ford, her small mouth pinched in a set smile. “At the Van Cortlandt’s. I tell Sue she’s getting on famously; of course you know the Van Cortlandts—as if there was any one in New York who didn’t. Of course you saw about their niece’s superb wedding in the papers the other day. Magnificent affair, wasn’t it?”
“Evidently it escaped me,” confessed Enoch.
“Why, Mr. Crane, the papers were full of it! As I tell Sue, when you do go into society, go into the best.”
“You are right, madam,” returned Enoch. “There is nothing rarer than good society; the best is none too good. It is more often shockingly bad.”
“But of course the Van Cortlandts, Mr. Crane. Their wealth and position——”
Enoch did not reply.
“Sue says their house on Fifth Avenue is a palace of luxury!” exclaimed her mother.
“Window-curtains alone cost forty thousand dollars, they claim,” put in Ford over Enoch’s shoulder.
“Well,” sighed the little woman, “when you have millions—do be seated, won’t you? I’ve disturbed you, I fear. Don’t fib—I have, haven’t I?—just as you were having a good old chat with Ebner. Ah, you men, when you get together! Of course you can tell I’m a Southerner, can’t you, Mr. Crane? They say we old families from North Carolina never quite lose our accent. Sue was speaking about it at the Van Cortlandts only the other day.”
“Worth about three millions, ain’t he?” interrupted Ford.
“Who—Sam Van Cortlandt?” inquired Enoch, turning sharply to him as Mrs. Ford subsided on the sofa, and began to smooth out the wrinkles in her new lavender-silk dress with an air of a duchess trying to decide whether or not she should give it to the poor.
“Wasn’t it him that made that big corner in cotton about ten years ago?” asked the promoter.
“Yes,” said Enoch. “That was Sam Van Cortlandt.”
“Biggest thing ever done, wa’n’t it?”
“Yes, Mr. Ford, in the way of unprincipled scoundrelism itwas,” declared Enoch with some heat. “Piracy on the high seas of finance. Piracy, pure and simple,” he declared, his stern voice rising savagely.
“Why, Mr. Crane, you surprise me!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford.
“Piracy, madam; there’s no other word for it.”
“Um!” exclaimed Ford. “You call a man a pirate and a scoundrel, because he’s successful—because he’s got grit, and nerve, and brains enough to carry a deal through that made him, if I recollect it right, over a million dollars in a single day?”
“I do,” snapped Enoch, “when that million means the financial ruin of hundreds of honest families. Sam Van Cortlandt ruined them by the wholesale. He ruined them from New Orleans to San Francisco,” he cried hotly. “Many of them have never recovered.”
Mrs. Ford raised her thin eyebrows to the speaker in silent astonishment.
“Six months later,” continued Enoch brusquely, squaring himself before the fireless grate, his hands clenched behind him, “Van Cortlandt again held his grip on the cotton market. Those who had managed to escape the first crash, went down under the second.A few came out limping, but he got most of them in the end—more than one he drove to suicide. Then they thought of running him for governor. Instead, the Supreme Court ran him uncomfortably close to the penitentiary for complicity in bribery relative to his mining territory in Montana. You have asked me about Sam Van Cortlandt. Very well; I have told you.”
He shut his square jaws hard, and gazed for some seconds at the pattern in the faded carpet.
Mrs. Ford did not utter a syllable; she sat immovable on the sofa, redder under the shock of Enoch’s tirade, though none too willing to believe it. The Van Cortlandt’s millions and social position, their niceness to her daughter, and the glamour of her being welcomed to their exclusive society serving only too readily as a balm to heal the gaping wound left by Enoch’s words.
Enoch had slashed deep; he had bared the truth about Sam Van Cortlandt down to the bone.
The promoter looked up and cleared his throat.
“Ain’t you exaggerating a little, friend?” he ventured blandly.
“Exaggerating!” Enoch jerked up his square jaws, and protruded his under lip, a gesture peculiar to him when he was roused. He focussed a kindling eye on his questioner: “Do you suppose, sir, I do not know what I am talking about? I am not given to making statements which have no foundation.”
“But all that which you speak of, Mr. Crane, is—ishappily in the past,” remarked Mrs. Ford sweetly, endeavoring to soften the awkward pause that followed. “As I tell Ebner, we should always be ready to forgive others their—their little mistakes. Oh! I believe strongly in forgiveness, Mr. Crane—’deed I do. I’m just that way, Mr. Crane, and always have been, since I was a girl—my old North Carolinian blood, I suppose—” Her monotonous, high-keyed voice softened as she spoke, and Enoch caught plainly now her Southern accent, touched slightly with the lazy cadence of the negro, as she continued to dilate upon the beauty and virtues of Mrs. Van Cortlandt and the lavish generosity of her husband.
“What’s past is past,” was Ford’s profound remark, when she had finished. “He got his money, anyway. If he’d laid down and give up, somebody else ’ed trampled over him—done the trick, and got it—wouldn’t they? I’ll bet you a thousand dollars even they would have.” (Ford’s bets were never lower than a thousand.) “I guess when you sift the whole thing down, friend, you’ll find Sam Van Cortlandt was up against a pretty big proposition. It was win out or die.”
Enoch lifted a face that quivered with sudden rage, but he did not open his lips.
“Hark!” said Mrs. Ford excitedly, as she caught the sound of a quick, familiar step on the stairs. “That’s Sue now,” and she rushed to open the door. She confided to Sue in an excited whisper as she tripped up to the landing that Mr. Crane was there; saw for herself that her daughter was trim and unruffled,smoothed a wisp of her fair hair in place, and ushered her into the sitting-room, beaming with motherly pride.
There was a refreshing cheerfulness about the young girl as she entered that sent the hard lines out of Enoch’s face before her mother had presented her. As he looked up critically at the girl before him, her charm and refinement were evident to him before she had even opened her pretty lips or stretched forth her shapely gloved hand, which she did with so much unassuming frankness that Enoch held it gratefully. Her cheeks were rosier than usual to-day. Evidently she had thoroughly enjoyed herself at the tea. There was a certain radiance and sparkle in her blue eyes, as she tossed her roll of music on the little Chippendale table and hastily drew off her gloves, that captivated him. He had already banished Van Cortlandt’s failings from his mind. It seemed incredible to him as he watched her, that she was really part of the household in which, for the last quarter of an hour, he had listened to the ill-disguised social aspirations of her mother and the crude, mercenary view-point of her stepfather. The sight of Sue warmed his heart; again his keen eyes kindled, this time with satisfaction.
“Your mother tells me you have been singing at a tea,” said Enoch in a kindly tone, as he released her hand. “I had no idea you were so gifted, my dear,” he continued pleasantly. “And you made a success? I’m sure of it.”
Sue flushed under the compliment.
“I did my best, Mr. Crane,” she confessed simply, with a forced little laugh.
“The Van Cortlandts have asked her to sing again next week,” declared her mother triumphantly.
“Well, say, girlie! that looks like success, don’t it?” broke in Ebner Ford. “Made a hit, did you?”
He slammed down the top of the roll-top desk, and locked it. Sue glanced at him with a pained expression.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Ford, it will be a good many years before I can really make a success,” she said evenly. Then turning to Enoch seriously: “I’m only a beginner, you know, Mr. Crane.”
“Of course you are,” he returned, “but there is a beginning to all art, a hard beginning, and you are beginning bravely, my dear. There is no short cut leading to art. It is a rough and stony road—mostly up-hill and very little down-dale, and for the most of its length hedged with thorns, masking so many pitfalls that many give up, faint and disheartened by the wayside, long before they reach the broad plateau of success at the top, and can stand there looking down over the valley of shadows and trials they have struggled up through safely.”
Sue caught her breath and looked at Enoch with her blue eyes wide open with eager interest. “Oh, how wonderful!” she cried. “Do go on.”
“I am not saying this to discourage you, my dear,” he continued, “but to encourage you. You are so young, so rich in years to come—years that we oldfellows no longer have. Do your best; sing on to the best of your ability. In every fresh effort, in every new note lies the real lesson. Think of how happy you will be when at last you are sure of yourself, sure in making others feel what you feel. In painting, in sculpture, and in literature it is the same, and in no art is this rare ability of making others feel what you interpret so rare as in music. Music without it is simply a display of pretty noises. Only the artist can touch the heart.” The ugly little room was silent as he ceased speaking. Sue’s eyes were shining.
“And you were not frightened?” asked Enoch.
“Yes, Mr. Crane,” declared Sue frankly, “I was. I was just scared to death before all those people. New York is so critical, you know. They have a way of looking at you when you begin as if they had made up their minds to be bored. Think of it, mother, the ball-room was packed—the conservatory, too. Mrs. Van Cortlandt, you remember, said she had only asked a few intimate friends to drop in for a cup of tea.”
“Gorgeous affair, of course,” declared the mother solemnly. “I expected it would be, honey. The Van Cortlandts always entertain so extravagantly. Well—” she sighed deeply—“when one has millions, Mr. Crane! Tell me, did Miss Stimpson play your accompaniments? I worried so, fearing she would disappoint you at the last moment; you know, honey, how uncertain she is.”
At which Sue declared that that near-sighted and nervous girl, Mazie Stimpson, had sent word at thelast moment that it was impossible for her to be there, owing to a distressing attack of sore throat.
“How outrageous of her!” exclaimed the mother. “No wonder, darling, you were nervous.”
“Pity you didn’t go along with her, Emma,” ventured Ford meekly; “been just the thing.”
“I certainly now wish I had,” declared Mrs. Ford firmly. “Sue is so dependent on a good accompanist, Mr. Crane.”
“Ah, but I found one, mother,” announced Sue, with so much satisfaction that Enoch pricked up his ears. “Who do you think came to my rescue? A Mr. Lamont. He plays exquisitely. Wasn’t it kind of him?”
“Mr. Lamont!” exclaimed the mother. “Not Mr. Jack Lamont?” she asked, beaming with interest.
Sue nodded. “Yes, mother—Mr. Jack Lamont. He’s simply marvellous. He gives one so much confidence when he’s at the piano. He’s so wonderfully clever in his phrasing, and never rushes you. I came home with him, mother. He insisted on taking me home in his brougham.” This time Enoch caught his breath. “I begged him to come up, but he had to go back for Mrs. Lamont. He told me such a lot of interesting things—about his polo-ponies and his yacht, and his cottage at Newport. The Van Cortlandts adore him.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford. “You, of course, have heard of Mr. Lamont,” she said, turning to Enoch. “‘Handsome Jack Lamont,’ they call him.He’s such a lion in society. They say no cotillon can be a success without him. You see his name everywhere.”
Enoch’s jaw closed with a grip; when it relaxed he confessed bluntly that he had not only heard about Mr. Lamont, but had seen him. That he was, in fact, a member of one of his clubs, where Mr. Lamont was not only to be seen, but heard. He did not add “drunk or sober.” Neither did he dilate upon the various escapades of that gentleman, or the strained relations that had existed during several reckless conspicuous years between Mrs. Lamont and her society-pampered husband, or that his polo-ponies were fed and cared for, his steam-yacht run, and the luxuries of his Newport cottage paid for out of Mrs. Lamont’s check-book—Jack Lamont’s favorite volume, the stubs of whose pages bore evidence of Mrs. Lamont’s resigned generosity in matters that did not concern the public. Instead, Enoch held his tongue and started to take his leave, having left in Sue Preston’s heart a certain friendly reverence. In Enoch, in his charm of manner, in his kindly outspoken sincerity, she saw those qualities so sadly lacking in her stepfather. Enoch was real. She already felt a strange confidence in him. From the little she had heard about him as their neighbor—a reputation of being brusque and ill-natured—she saw only too plainly now that it was a mask, back of which lay a personality, full of so much charm and kindliness, of insight and understanding, of that great gentleness which is part ofevery great gentleman, that she felt she might come to him gladly for advice as a daughter might come to a father. Had he not already encouraged her? and so eloquently and graciously that she could have listened to him for hours.
In the brief conversation that ensued as he neared the door to take his leave, Ebner Ford referred again to the hospitality of the young architects on the third floor, a tactless speech which Mrs. Ford received frigidly, and which forced Sue to confess guardedly:
“Strange—wasn’t it, mother?—Mr. Grimsby was at the Van Cortlandts’.”
“At theVan Cortlandts’! I trust it was by invitation,” returned her mother stiffly, recovering from her astonishment. “Nothing would surprise me in regard to that young man’s ability to force himself anywhere. Imagine, Mr. Crane—we were hardly——”
“But, mother, I only saw him for an instant, just as Mr. Lamont and I were leaving,” explained Sue. “He told me he had known the Van Cortlandts for years.”
“A most excellent young fellow,” declared Enoch briskly. “A most charming young fellow,” he insisted. “We are sadly in need of young men of his good taste and ability, when you consider, Mrs. Ford, how poverty-stricken in style our architecture has become. How many horrors in brownstone we are obliged to look at and live in. Atrocious jumbles, beastly attempts at Ionic and Corinthian—ugly, misshapen, and badly conceived—nightmares, madam, instone—scarcely a detail that does not offend the eyes. Roman, French, Renaissance, and Tudor stewed together, capped by mansard roofs, and decorated with vagaries from the fret-saw, the lathe, and the cold chisel in the hands of bumpkins—we are sadly in need of a revolution in all this. New York is growing; it will be a beautiful city some day, but it will take many years to make it so. Young men like Mr. Grimsby and his colleague, Mr. Atwater, I tell you are worth their weight in gold.” And with that he took his leave, not, however, without the consciousness as he did so of a pair of blue eyes smiling into his own.
“Jack Lamont!” he muttered to himself, as he climbed the stairs to his rooms to dress for dinner at the club. “And he brought that child home in his brougham? Merciful Heaven!”