Breakfast—any meal for that matter—in the high-wainscoted, dark-as-a-pocket dining-room of the successful Wall Street broker—the senior member of the firm of A. Breen & Co., uncle, guardian and employer of the fresh, rosy-cheeked lad who sat next to Peter on the night of Morris's dinner, was never a joyous function.
The room itself, its light shut out by the adjoining extensions, prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the scrap of a yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his master's guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and who had never been known to crack a smile of any kind, long or short, during his five years' sojourn with the family of Breen.
Not that anybody wanted Parkins to crack one, that is, not his master, and certainly not his mistress, and most assuredly not his other mistress, Miss Corinne, the daughter of the lady whom the successful Wall Street broker had made his first and only wife.
All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better had there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing away, sputtering out its good morning as you entered—and there would have been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon it—fought for it, if necessary; or if in summer one could have seen through the curtained windows a stretch of green grass with here and there a tree, or one or two twisted vines craning their necks to find out what was going on inside; or if in any or all seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny wife looking like a bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind the smoking coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar would be enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of affection, had thrown her arms around her father's neck and kissed him because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her day to begin that way:—if, I say, there had been all, or one-half, or one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this sepulchral interior might have been improved—but there wasn't.
There was a wife, of course, a woman two years older than Arthur Breen—the relict of a Captain Barker, an army officer—who had spent her early life in moving from one army post to another until she had settled down in Washington, where Breen had married her, and where the Scribe first met her. But this sharer of the fortunes of Breen preferred her breakfast in bed, New York life having proved even more wearing than military upheavals. And there was also a daughter, Miss Corinne Barker, Captain and Mrs. Barker's only offspring, who had known nothing of army posts, except as a child, but who had known everything of Washington life from the time she was twelve until she was fifteen, and she was now twenty; but that young woman, I regret to say, also breakfasted in bed, where her maid had special instructions not to disturb her until my lady's jewelled fingers touched a button within reach of her dainty hand; whereupon another instalment of buttered rolls and coffee would be served with such accessories of linen, porcelain and silver as befitted the appetite and station of one so beautiful and so accomplished.
These conditions never ceased to depress Jack. Fresh from a life out of doors, accustomed to an old-fashioned dining-room—the living room, really, of the family who had cared for him since his father's death, where not only the sun made free with the open doors and windows, but the dogs and neighbors as well—the sober formality of this early meal—all of his uncle's meals, for that matter—sent shivers down his back that chilled him to the bone.
He had looked about him the first morning of his arrival, had noted the heavy carved sideboard laden with the garish silver; had examined the pictures lining the walls, separated from the dark background of leather by heavy gold frames; had touched with his fingers the dial of the solemn bronze clock, flanked by its equally solemn candelabra; had peered between the steel andirons, bright as carving knives, and into the freshly varnished, spacious chimney up which no dancing blaze had ever whirled in madcap glee since the mason's trowel had left it and never would to the end of time,—not as long as the steam heat held out; had watched the crane-like step of Parkins as he moved about the room—cold, immaculate, impassive; had listened to his “Yes, sir—thank you, sir, very good, sir,” until he wanted to take him by the throat and shake something spontaneous and human out of him, and as each cheerless feature passed in review his spirits had sunk lower and lower.
This, then, was what he could expect as long as he lived under his uncle's roof—a period of time which seemed to him must stretch out into dim futurity. No laughing halloos from passing neighbors through wide-open windows; no Aunt Hannahs running in with a plate of cakes fresh from the griddle which would cool too quickly if she waited for that slow-coach of a Tom to bring them to her young master. No sweep of leaf-covered hills seen through bending branches laden with blossoms; no stretch of sky or slant of sunshine; only a grim, funereal, artificial formality, as ungenial and flattening to a boy of his tastes, education and earlier environment as a State asylum's would have been to a red Indian fresh from the prairie.
On the morning after Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of the time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built table—it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers—when his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with his—“Cream, sir,—yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir.” (Parkins had been second man with Lord Colchester, so he told Breen when he hired him.) Jack had about made up his mind to order him out when a peculiar tone in his uncle's “Good morning” made the boy scan that gentleman's face and figure the closer.
His uncle was as well dressed as usual, looking as neat and as smart in his dark cut-away coat with the invariable red carnation in his buttonhole, but the boy's quick eye caught the marks of a certain wear and tear in the face which neither his bath nor his valet had been able to obliterate. The thin lips—thin for a man so fat, and which showed, more than any other feature, something of the desultory firmness of his character—drooped at the corners. The eyes were half their size, the snap all out of them, the whites lost under the swollen lids. His greeting, moreover, had lost its customary heartiness.
“You were out late, I hear,” he grumbled, dropping into his chair. “I didn't get in myself until two o'clock and feel like a boiled owl. May have caught a little cold, but I think it was that champagne of Duckworth's; always gives me a headache. Don't put any sugar and cream in that coffee, Parkins—want it straight.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the flunky, moving toward the sideboard.
“And now, Jack, what did you do?” he continued, picking up his napkin. “You and Garry made a night of it, didn't you? Some kind of an artist's bat, wasn't it?”
“No, sir; Mr. Morris gave a dinner to his clerks, and—”
“Who's Morris?”
“Why, the great architect.”
“Oh, that fellow! Yes, I know him, that is, I know who he is. Say the rest. Parkins! didn't I tell you I didn't want any sugar or cream.”
Parkins hadn't offered any. He had only forgotten to remove them from the tray.
Jack kept straight on; these differences between the master and Parkins were of daily occurrence.
“And, Uncle Arthur, I met the most wonderful gentleman I ever saw; he looked just as if he had stepped out of an old frame, and yet he is down in the Street every day and—”
“What firm?”
“No firm, he is—”
“Curbstone man, then?” Here Breen lifted the cup to his lips and as quickly put it down. “Parkins!”
“Yes, sir,” came the monotone.
“Why the devil can't I get my coffee hot?”
“Is it cold, sir?”—slight modulation, but still lifeless.
“IS IT COLD? Of course it's cold! Might have been standing in a morgue. Take that down and have some fresh coffee sent up. Servants running o'er each other and yet I can't get a—Go on, Jack! I didn't mean to interrupt, but I'll clean the whole lot of 'em out of here if I don't get better service.”
“No, Uncle Arthur, he isn't a banker—isn't even a broker; he's only a paying teller in a bank,” continued Jack.
The older man turned his head and a look of surprise swept over his round, fat face.
“Teller in a BANK?” he asked in an altered tone.
“Yes, the most charming, the most courteous old gentleman I have ever met; I haven't seen anybody like him since I left home, and, just think, he has promised to come and see me to-night.”
The drooping lips straightened and a shrewd, searching glance shot from Arthur Breen's eyes. There was a brain behind this sleepy face—as many of his competitors knew. It was not always in working order, but when it was the man became another personality.
“Jack—” The voice was now as thin as the drawn lips permitted, with caution in every tone, “you stop short off. You mustn't cotton to everybody you pick up in New York—it won't do. Get you into trouble. Don't bring him here; your aunt won't like it. When you get into a hole with a fellow and can't help yourself, take him to the club. That's one of the things I got you into the Magnolia for; but don't ever bring 'em here.”
“But he's a personal friend of Mr. Morris, and a friend of another friend of Mr. Morris's they called 'Major.'” It was not the first time he had heard such inhospitable suggestions from his uncle.
“Oh, yes, I know; they've all got some old retainers hanging on that they give a square meal to once a year, but don't you get mixed up with 'em.”
Parkins had returned by this time and was pouring a fresh cup of coffee.
“Now, Parkins, that's something like—No, I don't want any kidneys—I don't want any toast—I don't want anything, Parkins—haven't I told you so?”
“Yes, sir; thank you sir.”
“Black coffee is the only thing that'll settle this head. What you want to do, Jack, is to send that old fossil word that you've got another engagement, and... Parkins, is there anything going on here to-night?”
“Yes, sir; Miss Corinne is giving a small dance.”
“There, Jack—that's it. That'll let you out with a whole skin.”
“No, I can't, and I won't, Uncle Arthur,” he answered in an indignant tone. “If you knew him as I do, and had seen him last night, you would—”
“No, I don't want to know him and I don't want to see him. You are all balled up, I see, and can't work loose, but take him upstairs; don't let your aunt come across him or she'll have a fit.” Here he glanced at the bronze clock. “What!—ten minutes past nine! Parkins, see if my cab is at the door.... Jack, you ride down with me. I walked when I was your age, and got up at daylight. Some difference, Jack, isn't there, whether you've got a rich uncle to look after you or not.” This last came with a wink.
It was only one of his pleasantries. He knew he was not rich; not in the accepted sense. He might be a small star in the myriads forming the Milky-Way of Finance, but there were planets millions of miles beyond him, whose brilliancy he was sure he could never equal. The fact was that the money which he had accumulated had been so much greater sum than he had ever hoped for when he was a boy in a Western State—his father went to Iowa in '49—and the changes in his finances had come with such lightning rapidity (half a million made on a tip given him by a friend, followed by other tips more or less profitable) that he loved to pat his pride, so to speak, in speeches like this.
That he had been swept off his feet by the social and financial rush about him was quite natural. His wife, whose early life had been one long economy, had ambitions to which there was no limit and her escape from her former thraldom had been as sudden and as swift as the upward spring of a loosened balloon. Then again all the money needed to make the ascension successful was at her disposal. Hence jewels, laces, and clothes; hence elaborate dinners, the talk of the town: hence teas, receptions, opera parties, week-end parties at their hired country seat on Long Island; dances for Corinne; dinners for Corinne; birthday parties for Corinne; everything, in fact, for Corinne, from manicures to pug dogs and hunters.
His two redeeming qualities were his affection for his wife and his respect for his word. He had no child of his own, and Corinne, though respectful never showed him any affection. He had sent Jack to a Southern school and college, managing meanwhile the little property his father had left him, which, with some wild lands in the Cumberland Mountains, practically worthless, was the boy's whole inheritance, and of late had treated him as if he had been his own son.
As to his own affairs, close as he sailed to the wind in his money transactions—so close sometimes that the Exchange had more than once overhauled his dealings—it was generally admitted that when Arthur Breen gave his WORD—a difficult thing often to get—he never broke it. This was offset by another peculiarity with less beneficial results: When he had once done a man a service only to find him ungrateful, no amount of apologies or atonement thereafter ever moved him to forgiveness. Narrow-gauge men are sometimes built that way.
It was to be expected, therefore, considering the quality of Duckworth's champagne and the impression made on Jack by his uncle's outburst, that the ride down town in the cab was marked by anything but cheerful conversation between Breen and his nephew, each of whom sat absorbed in his own reflections. “I didn't mean to be hard on the boy,” ruminated Breen, “but if I had picked up everybody who wanted to know me, as Jack has done, where would I be now?” Then, his mind still clouded by the night at the club (he had not confined himself entirely to champagne), he began, as was his custom, to concentrate his attention upon the work of the day—on the way the market would open; on the remittance a belated customer had promised and about which he had some doubt; the meeting of the board of directors in the new mining company—“The Great Mukton Lode,” in which he had an interest, and a large one—etc.
Jack looked out of the windows, his eyes taking in the remnants of the autumnal tints in the Park, now nearly gone, the crowd filling the sidewalks; the lumbering stages and the swifter-moving horse-cars crammed with eager men anxious to begin the struggle of the day—not with their hands—that mob had swept past hours before—but with their brains—wits against wits and the devil take the man who slips and falls.
Nothing of it all interested him. His mind was on the talk at the breakfast table, especially his uncle's ideas of hospitality, all of which had appalled and disgusted him. With his father there had always been a welcome for every one, no matter what the position in life, the only standard being one of breeding and character—and certainly Peter had both. His uncle had helped him, of course—put him under obligations he could never repay. Yet after all, it was proved now to him that he was but a guest in the house enjoying only such rights as any other guest might possess, and with no voice in the welcome—a condition which would never be altered, until he became independent himself—a possibility which at the moment was too remote to be considered. Then his mind reverted to his conversation the night before with Mr. Grayson and with this change of thought his father's portrait—the one that hung in his room—loomed up. He had the night before turned on the lights—to their fullest—and had scanned the picture closely, eager to find some trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment of the man he loved best, and whose memory was still almost a religion, but except that both Peter and his father were bald, and that both wore high, old-fashioned collars and neck-cloths, he had been compelled to admit with a sigh that there was nothing about the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to resemblance.
“Yet he's like my father, he is, he is,” he kept repeating to himself as the cab sped on. “I'll find out what it is when I know him better. To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I'll study it out,” and a joyous smile flashed across his features as he thought of the treat in store for him.
When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the mahogany partition with its pigeon-hole cut through the glass front he sat every day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took out his books and papers and made ready for work. He had charge of the check book, and he alone signed the firm's name outside of the partners. “Rather young,” one of them protested, until he looked into the boy's face, then he gave his consent; something better than years of experience and discretion are wanted where a scratch of a pen might mean financial ruin.
Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared into his private office—another erection of ground glass and mahogany. Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers. With this he opened a small closet near his desk—a mere box of a closet—took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled “Rye, 1840,” poured out half a glass, emptied it into his person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that he was now “copper fastened inside and out”—removed all traces of the incident and took up his morning's mail.
By this time the circle of chairs facing the huge blackboard in the spacious outer office had begun to fill up. Some of the customers, before taking their seats, hurried anxiously to the ticker, chattering away in its glass case; others turned abruptly and left the room without a word. Now and then a customer would dive into Breen's private room, remain a moment and burst out again, his face an index of the condition of his bank account.
When the chatter of the ticker had shifted from the London quotations to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard, its margin lettered with the initials of the principal stocks. The appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary days, with the market lifeless, but half of the orchestra seats would be occupied. In whirl-times, with the ticker spelling ruin, not only were the chairs full, but standing room only was available in the offices.
Their occupants came from all classes; clerks from up-town dry-goods houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie, or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up; well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired novices nervously rolling little wads of paper between their fingers and thumbs—up every few minutes to listen to the talk of the ticker, too anxious to wait until the sallow-faced young man with the piece of chalk could make his record on the board. Some of them had gathered together their last dollar. Two per cent. or one percent, or even one-half of one per cent. rise or fall was all that stood between them and ruin.
“Very sorry, sir, but you know we told you when you opened the account that you must keep your margins up,” Breen had said to an old man. The old man knew; had known it all night as he lay awake, afraid to tell his wife of the sword hanging above their heads. Knew it, too, when without her knowledge he had taken the last dollar of the little nest-egg to make good the deficit owed Breen & Co. over and above his margins, together with some other things “not negotiable”—not our kind of collateral but “stuff” that could “lie in the safe until he could make some other arrangement,” the cashier had said with the firm's consent.
Queer safe, that of Breen & Co., and queer things went into it. Most of them were still there. Jack thought some jeweller had sent part of his stock down for safe-keeping when he first came across a tiny drawer of which Breen alone kept the key. Each object could tell a story: a pair of diamond ear-rings surely could, and so could four pearls on a gold chain, and perhaps, too, a certain small watch, the case set with jewels. One of these days they may be redeemed, or they may not, depending upon whether the owners can scrape money enough together to pay the balances owed in cash. But the four pearls on the gold chain are likely to remain there—that poor fellow went overboard one morning off Nantucket Light, and his secret went with him.
During the six months Jack had stood at his desk new faces had filled the chairs—the talk had varied; though he felt only the weary monotony of it all. Sometimes there had been hours of tense excitement, when even his uncle had stood by the ticker, and when every bankable security in the box had been overhauled and sent post-haste to the bank or trust company. Jack, followed by the porter with a self-cocking revolver in his outside pocket, had more than once carried the securities himself, returning to the office on the run with a small scrap of paper good for half a million or so tucked away in his inside pocket. Then the old monotony had returned with its dull routine and so had the chatter and talk. “Buy me a hundred.” “Yes, let 'em go.” “No, I don't want to risk it.” “What's my balance?” “Thought you'd get another eighth for that stock.” “Sold at that figure, anyhow,” etc.
Under these conditions life to a boy of Jack's provincial training and temperament seemed narrowed down to an arm-chair, a black-board, a piece of chalk and a restless little devil sputtering away in a glass case, whose fiat meant happiness or misery. Only the tongue of the demon was in evidence. The brain behind it, with its thousand slender nerves quivering with the energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs. To them its spoken word was the dictum of fate. Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates—failure meant obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige. Taking a flier in the Street was altogether different—great financiers were behind the fluctuations of values told by the tongue of the ticker, and behind them was the wealth of the Republic and still in the far distance the power of the American people. Few of them ever looked below the grease paint, nor did the most discerning ever detect the laugh on the clown's face.
The boy half hidden by the glass screen, through which millions were passed and repassed every month, caught now and then a glimpse.
Once a faded, white-haired old man had handed Jack a check after banking hours to make good an account—a man whose face had haunted him for hours. His uncle told him the poor fellow had “run up solid” against a short interest in a stock that some Croesus was manipulating to get even with another Croesus who had manipulated HIM, and that the two Croesuses had “buried the old man alive.” The name of the stock Jack had forgotten, but the suffering in the victim's face had made an indelible impression. In reply to Jack's further inquiry, his uncle had spoken as if the poor fellow had been wandering about on some unknown highway when the accident happened, failing to add that he himself had led him through the gate and started him on the road; forgetting, too, to say that he had collected the toll in margins, a sum which still formed a considerable portion of Breen & Co.'s bank account. One bit of information which Breen had vouchsafed, while it did not relieve the gloom of the incident, added a note of courage to the affair:
“He was game, however, all the same, Jack. Had to go down into his wife's stocking, I hear. Hard hit, but he took it like a man.”
While all this was going on downtown under the direction of the business end of the house of Breen, equally interesting events were taking place uptown under the guidance of its social head. Strict orders had been given by Mrs. Breen the night before that certain dustings and arrangings of furniture should take place, the spacious stairs swept, and the hectic hired palms in their great china pots watered. I say “the night before,” because especial stress was laid upon the fact that on no account whatever were either Mrs. Breen or her daughter Corinne to be disturbed until noon—neither of them having retired until a late hour the night before.
So strictly were these orders carried out that all that did reach the younger woman's ear—and this was not until long after mid-day—was a scrap of news which crept upstairs from the breakfast table via Parkins wireless, was caught by Corinne's maid and delivered in manifold with that young lady's coffee and buttered rolls. This when deciphered meant that Jack was not to be at the dance that evening—he having determined instead to spend his time up stairs with a disreputable old fellow whom he had picked up somewhere at a supper the preceding night.
Corinne thought over the announcement for a moment, gazed into the egg-shell cup that Hortense was filling from the tiny silver coffee-pot, and a troubled expression crossed her face. “What has come over Jack?” she asked herself. “I never knew him to do anything like this before. Is he angry, I wonder, because I danced with Garry the other night? It WAS his dance, but I didn't think he would care. He has always done everything to please me—until now.” Perhaps the boy was about to slip the slight collar he had worn in her service—one buckled on by him willingly because—though she had not known it—he was a guest in the house. Heretofore she said to herself Jack had been her willing slave, a feather in her cap—going everywhere with her; half the girls were convinced he was in love with her—a theory which she had encouraged. What would they say now? This prospect so disturbed the young woman that she again touched the button, and again Hortense glided in.
“Hortense, tell Parkins to let me know the moment Mr. John comes in—and get me my blue tea-gown; I sha'n't go out to-day.” This done she sank back on her pillows.
She was a slight little body, this Corinne—blue-eyed, fair-haired, with a saucy face and upturned nose. Jack thought when he first saw her that she looked like a wren with its tiny bill in the air—and Jack was not far out of the way. And yet she was a very methodical, level-headed little wren, with several positive convictions which dominated her life—one of them being that everybody about her ought to do, not as they, but as she, pleased. She had begun, and with pronounced success, on her mother as far back as she could remember, and had then tried her hand on her stepfather until it became evident that as her mother controlled that gentleman it was a waste of time to experiment further. All of which was a saving of stones without the loss of any birds.
Where she failed—and she certainly had failed, was with Jack, who though punctiliously polite was elusive and—never quite subdued. Yet the discovery made, she neither pouted nor lost her temper, but merely bided her time. Sooner or later, she knew, of course, this boy, who had seen nothing of city life and who was evidently dazed with all the magnificence of the stately home overlooking the Park, would find his happiest resting-place beneath the soft plumage of her little wing. And if by any chance he should fall in love with her—and what more natural; did not everybody fall in love with her?—would it not be wiser to let him think she returned it, especially if she saw any disposition on the young man's part to thwart her undisputed sway of the household?
For months she had played her little game, yet to her amazement none of the things she had anticipated had happened. Jack had treated her as he would any other young woman of his acquaintance—always with courtesy—always doing everything to oblige her, but never yielding to her sway. He would laugh sometimes at her pretensions, just as he would have laughed at similar self-assertiveness on the part of any one else with whom he must necessarily be thrown, but never by thought, word or deed had he ever given my Lady Wren the faintest suspicion that he considered her more beautiful, better dressed, or more entertaining, either in song, chirp, flight or plumage, than the flock of other birds about her. Indeed, the Scribe knows it to be a fact that if Jack's innate politeness had not forbidden, he would many times have told her truths, some of them mighty unpleasant ones, to which her ears had been strangers since her school-girl days.
This unstudied treatment, strange to say—the result really, of the boy's indifference—had of late absorbed her. What she could not have she generally longed for, and there was not the slightest question up to the present moment that Jack was still afield.
Again the girl pressed the button of the cord within reach of her hand, and for the third time Hortense entered.
“Have you told Parkins I want to know the very instant Mr. John comes in?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And, Hortense, did you understand that Mr. John was to go out to meet the gentleman, or was the gentleman to come to his rooms?”
“To his rooms, I think, miss.”
She was wearing her blue tea-gown, stretched out on the cushions of one of the big divans in the silent drawing-room, when she heard Jack's night-key touch the lock. Springing to her feet she ran toward him.
“Why, Jack, what's this I hear about your not coming to my dance? It isn't true, is it?” She was close to him now, her little head cocked on one side, her thin, silken draperies dripping about her slender figure.
“Who told you?”
“Parkins told Hortense.”
“Leaky Parkins?” laughed Jack, tossing his hat on the hall table.
“But you are coming, aren't you, Jack? Please do!”
“Not to-night; you don't need me, Corinne.” His voice told her at once that not only was the leash gone but that the collar was off as well.
“Yes, but I do.”
“Then please excuse me, for I have an old gentleman coming to pay me a visit. The finest old gentleman, by the way, you ever saw! A regular thoroughbred, Corinne—who looks like a magnificent portrait!” he added in his effort to interest her.
“But let him come some other time,” she coaxed, holding the lapel of his coat, her eyes searching his.
“What, turn to the wall a magnificent old portrait!” This came with a mock grimace, his body bent forward, his eyes brimming with laughter.
“Be serious, Jack, and tell me if you think it very nice in you to stay upstairs in your den when I am giving a dance? Everybody will know you are at home, and we haven't enough men as it is. Garry can't come, he writes me. He has to dine with some men at the club.”
“I really AM sorry, Corinne, but I can't this time.” Jack had hold of her hand now; for a brief moment he was sorry he had not postponed Peter's visit until the next day; he hated to cause any woman a disappointment. “If it was anybody else I might send him word to call another night, but you don't know Mr. Grayson; he isn't the kind of a man you can treat like that. He does me a great honor to come, anyhow. Just think of his coming to see a boy like me—and he so—”
“Well, bring him downstairs, then.” Her eyes began to flash; she had tried all the arts she knew—they were not many—but they had won heretofore. “Mother will take care of him. A good many of the girls' fathers come for them.”
“Bring him downstairs to a dance!” Jack answered with a merry laugh. “He isn't that kind of an old gentleman, either. Why, Corinne, you ought to see him! You might as well ask old Bishop Gooley to lead the german.”
Jack's foot was now ready to mount the lower step of the stairs. Corinne bit her lip.
“You never do anything to please me!” she snapped back. She knew she was fibbing, but something must be done to check this new form of independence—and then, now that Garry couldn't come, she really needed him. “You don't want to come, that's it—” She facing him now, her little nose high in the air, her cheeks flaming with anger.
“You must not say that, Corinne,” he answered in a slightly indignant tone.
Corinne drew herself up to her full height—toes included; not very high, but all she could do—and said in a voice pitched to a high key, her finger within a few inches of his nose:
“It's true, and I will say it!”
The rustle of silk was heard overhead, and a plump, tightly laced woman in voluminous furs, her head crowned by a picture hat piled high with plumes, was making her way down the stairs. Jack looked up and waved his hand to his aunt, and then stood at mock attention, like a corporal on guard, one hand raised to salute her as she passed. The boy, with the thought of Peter coming, was very happy this afternoon.
“What are you two quarrelling about?” came the voice. Rather a soft voice with a thread of laziness running through it.
“Jack's too mean for anything, mother. He knows we haven't men enough without him for a cotillion, now that Garry has dropped out, and he's been just stupid enough to invite some old man to come and see him this evening.”
The furs and picture hat swept down and on, Jack standing at attention, hands clasping an imaginary musket his face drawn down to its severest lines, his cheeks puffed out to make him look the more solemn. When the wren got “real mad” he would often say she was the funniest thing alive.
“I'm a pig, I know, aunty” (here Jack completed his salute with a great flourish), “but Corinne does not really want me, and she knows it. She only wants to have her own way. They don't dance cotillions when they come here—at least they didn't last time, and I don't believe they will to-night. They sit around with each other in the corners and waltz with the fellows they've picked out—and it's all arranged between them, and has been for a week—ever since they heard Corinne was going to give a dance.” The boy spoke with earnestness and a certain tone of conviction in his voice, although his face was still radiant.
“Well, can't you sit around, too, Jack?” remarked his aunt, pausing in her onward movement for an instant. “I'm sure there will be some lovely girls.”
“Yes, but they don't want me. I've tried it too often, aunty—they've all got their own set.”
“It's because you don't want to be polite to any of them,” snapped Corinne with a twist of her body, so as to face him again.
“Now, Corinne, that isn't fair; I am never impolite to anybody in this house, but I'm tired of—”
“Well, Garry isn't tired.” This last shot was fired at random.
Again the aunt poured oil: “Come, children, come! Don't let's talk any more about it. If Jack has made an engagement it can't be helped, I suppose, but don't spoil your party, my dear. Find Parkins, Jack, and send him to me.... Ah, Parkins—if any one calls say I'll be out until six o'clock.”
“Yes, my Lady.” Parkins knew on which side his bread was buttered. She had reproved him at first, but his excuse was that she was so like his former mistress, Lady Colchester, that he sometimes forgot himself.
And again “my Lady” swept on, this time out of the door and into her waiting carriage.
Jack's impatience increased as the hour for Peter's visit approached. Quarter of nine found him leaning over the banisters outside his small suite of rooms, peering down between the hand-rails watching the top of every head that crossed the spacious hall three flights below—he dare not go down to welcome his guest, fearing some of the girls, many of whom had already arrived, would know he was in the house. Fifteen minutes later the flash of a bald head, glistening in the glare of the lower hall lantern, told him that the finest old gentleman in the world had arrived, and on the very minute. Parkins's special instructions, repeated for the third time, were to bring Mr. Peter Grayson—it was wonderful what an impressive note was in the boy's voice when he rolled out the syllables—up at once, surtout, straight-brimmed hat, overshoes (if he wore any), umbrella and all, and the four foot-falls—two cat-like and wabbly, as befitted the obsequious flunky, and two firm and decided, as befitted a grenadier crossing a bridge—could now be heard mounting the stairs.
“So here you are!” cried Peter, holding out both hands to the overjoyed boy—“'way up near the sky. One flight less than my own. Let me get my breath, my boy, before I say another word. No, don't worry, only Anno Domini—you'll come to it some day. How delightfully you are settled!”
They had entered the cosey sitting-room and Jack was helping with his coat; Parkins, with his nose in the air (he had heard his master's criticism), having already placed his hat on a side table and the umbrella in the corner.
“Where will you sit—in the big chair by the fire or in this long straw one?” cried the boy, Peter's coat still in his hand.
“Nowhere yet; let me look around a little.” One of Peter's tests of a man was the things he lived with. “Ah! books?” and he peered at a row on the mantel. “Macaulay, I see, and here's Poe: Good, very good—why, certainly it is—Where did you get this Morland?” and again Peter's glasses went up. “Through that door is your bedroom—yes, and the bath. Very charming, I must say. You ought to live very happily here; few young fellows I know have half your comforts.”
Jack had interrupted him to say that the Morland print was one that he had brought from his father's home, and that the books had come from the same source, but Peter kept on in his tour around the room. Suddenly he stopped and looked steadily at a portrait over the mantel.
“Yes—your father—”
“You knew!” cried Jack.
“Knew! How could any one make a mistake? Fine head. About fifty I should say. No question about his firmness or his kindness. Yes—fine head—and a gentleman, that is best of all. When you come to marry always hunt up the grandfather—saves such a lot of trouble in after life,” and one of Peter's infectious laughs filled the room.
“Do you think he looks anything like Uncle Arthur? You have seen him, I think you said.”
Peter scanned the portrait. “Not a trace. That may also be a question of grandfathers—” and another laugh rippled out. “But just be thankful you bear his name. It isn't always necessary to have a long line of gentlemen behind you, and if you haven't any, or can't trace them, a man, if he has pluck and grit, can get along without them; but it's very comforting to know they once existed. Now let me sit down and listen to you,” added Peter, whose random talk had been inspired by the look of boyish embarrassment on Jack's face. He had purposely struck many notes in order to see which one would echo in the lad's heart, so that his host might find himself, just as he had done when Jack with generous impulse had sprang from his chair to carry Minott the ring.
The two seated themselves—Peter in the easy chair and Jack opposite. The boy's eyes roamed from the portrait, with its round, grave face, to Peter's head resting on the cushioned back, illumined by the light of the lamp, throwing into relief the clear-cut lips, little gray side-whiskers and the tightly drawn skin covering his scalp, smooth as polished ivory.
“Am I like him?” asked Peter. He had caught the boy's glances and had read his thoughts.
“No—and yes. I can't see it in the portrait, but I do in the way you move your hands and in the way you bow. I keep thinking of him when I am with you. It may, as you say, be a good thing to have a gentleman for a father, sir, but it is a dreadful thing, all the same, to lose him just as you need him most. I wouldn't hate so many of the things about me if I had him to go to now and then.”
“Tell me about him and your early life,” cried Peter, crossing one leg over the other. He knew the key had been struck; the boy might now play on as he chose.
“There is very little to tell. I lived in the old home with an aunt after my father's death. And went to school and then to college at Hagerstown—quite a small college—where uncle looked after me—he paid the expenses really—and then I was clerk in a law office for a while, and at my aunt's death about a year ago the old place was sold and I had no home, and Uncle Arthur sent for me to come here.”
“Very decent in him, and you should never forget him for it,” and again Peter's eyes roamed around the perfectly appointed room.
“I know it, sir, and at first the very newness and strangeness of everything delighted me. Then I began to meet the people. They were so different from those in my part of the country, especially the young fellows—Garry is not so bad, because he really loves his work and is bound to succeed—everybody says he has a genius for architecture—but the others—and the way they treat the young girls, and what is more unaccountable to me is the way the young girls put up with it.”
Peter had settled himself deeper in his chair, his eyes shaded with one hand and looked intently at the boy.
“Uncle Arthur is kind to me, but the life smothers me. I can't breathe sometimes. Nothing my father taught me is considered worth while here. People care for other things.”
“What, for instance?” Peter's hand never moved, nor did his body.
“Why stocks and bonds and money, for instance,” laughed Jack, beginning to be annoyed at his own tirade—half ashamed of it in fact. “Stocks are good enough in their way, but you don't want to live with them from ten o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, and then hear nothing else talked about until you go to bed. That's why that dinner last night made such an impression on me. Nobody said money once.”
“But every one of those men had his own hobby—”
“Yes, but in my uncle's world they all ride one and the same horse. I don't want to be a pessimist, Mr. Grayson, and I want you to set me straight if I am wrong, but Mr. Morris and every one of those men about him were the first men I've seen in New York who appear to me to be doing the things that will live after them. What are we doing down-town? Gambling the most of us.”
“But your life here isn't confined to your uncle and his stock-gambling friends. Surely these lovely young girls—two of them came in with me—” and Peter smiled, “must make your life delightful.”
Jack's eyes sought the floor, then he answered slowly:
“I hope you won't think me a cad, but—No, I'm not going to say a word about them, only I can't get accustomed to them and there's no use of my saying that I can. I couldn't treat any girl the way they are treated here. And I tell you another thing—none of the young girls whom I know at home would treat me as these girls treat the men they know. I'm queer, I guess, but I might as well make a clean breast of it all. I am an ingrate, perhaps, but I can't help thinking that the old life at home was the best. We loved our friends, and they were welcome at our table any hour, day or night. We had plenty of time for everything; we lived out of doors or in doors, just as we pleased, and we dressed to suit ourselves, and nobody criticised. Why, if I drop into the Magnolia on my way up-town and forget to wear a derby hat with a sack coat, or a black tie with a dinner-jacket, everybody winks and nudges his neighbor. Did you ever hear of such nonsense in your life?”
The boy paused as if the memory of some incident in which he was ridiculed was alive in his mind. Peter's eyes were still fixed on his face.
“Go on—I'm listening; and what else hurts you? Pour it all out. That's what I came for. You said last night nobody would listen—I will.”
“Well, then, I hate the sham of it all; the silly social distinctions; the fits and starts of hospitality; the dinners given for show. Nothing else going on between times; even the music is hired. I want to hear music that bubbles out—old Hannah singing in the kitchen, and Tom, my father's old butler, whistling to himself—and the dogs barking, and the birds singing outside. I'm ashamed of myself making comparisons, but that was the kind of life I loved, because there was sincerity in it.”
“No work?” There was a note of sly merriment in the inquiry, but Jack never caught it.
“Not much. My father was Judge and spent part of the time holding court, and his work never lasted but a few hours a day, and when I wanted to go fishing or shooting, or riding with the girls, Mr. Larkin always let me off. And I had plenty of time to read—and for that matter I do here, if I lock myself up in this room. That low library over there is full of my father's books.”
Again Peter's voice had a tinge of merriment in it.
“And who supported the family?” he asked in a lower voice.
“My father.”
“And who supported him?”
The question brought Jack to a full stop. He had been running on, pouring out his heart for the first time since his sojourn in New York, and to a listener whom he knew he could trust.
“Why—his salary, of course,” answered Jack in astonishment, after a pause.
“Anything else?”
“Yes—the farm.”
“And who worked that?”
“My father's negroes—some of them his former slaves.”
“And have you any money of your own—anything your father left you?”
“Only enough to pay taxes on some wild lands up in Cumberland County, and which I'm going to hold on to for his sake.”
Peter dropped his shading fingers, lifted his body from the depths of the easy chair and leaned forward so that the light fell full on his face. He had all the information he wanted now.
“And now let me tell you my story, my lad. It is a very short one. I had the same sort of a home, but no father—none that I remember—and no mother, they both died before my sister Felicia and I were grown up. At twelve I left school; at fifteen I worked in a country store—up at daylight and to bed at midnight, often. From twenty to twenty-five I was entry clerk in a hardware store; then book-keeper; then cashier in a wagon factory; then clerk in a village bank—then book-keeper again in my present bank, and there I have been ever since. My only advantages were a good constitution and the fact that I came of gentle people. Here we are both alike—you at twenty—how old?—twenty two?... Well, make it twenty-two.... You at twenty-two and I at twenty-two seem to have started out in life with the same natural advantages, so far as years and money go, but with this difference—Shall I tell you what it is?”
“Yes.”
“That I worked and loved it, and love it still, and that you are lazy and love your ease. Don't be offended—” Here Peter laid his hand on the boy's knee. He waited an instant, and not getting any reply, kept on: “What you want to do is to go to work. It wouldn't have been honorable in you to let your father support you after you were old enough to earn your own living, and it isn't honorable in you, with your present opinions, to live on your uncle's bounty, and to be discontented and rebellious at that, for that's about what it all amounts to. You certainly couldn't pay for these comforts outside of this house on what Breen & Co. can afford to pay you. Half of your mental unrest, my lad, is due to the fact that you do not know the joy and comfort to be got out of plain, common, unadulterated work.”
“I'll do anything that is not menial.”
“What do you mean by 'menial'?”
“Well, working like a day-laborer.”
“Most men who have succeeded have first worked with their hands.”
“Not my uncle.”
“No, not your uncle—he's an exception—one among a million, and then again he isn't through.”
“But he's worth two million, they say.”
“Yes, but he never earned it, and he never worked for it, and he doesn't now. Do you want to follow in his footsteps?”
“No—not with all his money.” This came in a decided tone. “But surely you wouldn't want me to work with my hands, would you?”
“I certainly should, if necessary.”
Jack looked at him, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face.
“But I COULDN'T do anything menial.”
“There isn't anything menial in any kind of work from cleaning a stable up! The menial things are the evasions of work—tricks by which men are cheated out of their just dues.”
“Stock gambling?”
“Yes—sometimes, when the truth is withheld.”
“That's what I think; that's what I meant last night when I told you about the faro-bank. I laughed over it, and yet I can't see much difference, although I have never seen one.”
“So I understood, but you were wrong about it. Your uncle bears a very good name in the Street. He is not as much to blame as the system. Perhaps some day the firm will become real bankers, than which there is no more honorable calling.”
“But is it wrong to want to fish and shoot and have time to read.”
“No, it is wrong not to do it when you have the time and the money. I like that side of your nature. My own theory is that every man should in the twenty-four hours of the day devote eight to work, eight to sleep and eight to play. But this can only be done when the money to support the whole twenty-four hours is in sight, either in wages, or salary, or invested securities. More money than this—that is the surplusage that men lock up in their tin boxes, is a curse. But with that you have nothing to do—not yet, anyhow. Now, if I catch your meaning, your idea is to go back to your life at home. In other words you want to live the last end of your life first—and without earning the right to it. And because you cannot do this you give yourself up to criticising everything about you. Getting only at the faults and missing all the finer things in life. If you would permit me to advise you—” he still had his hand on the lad's knee, searching the soft brown eyes—“I would give up finding fault and first try to better things, and I would begin right here where you are. Some of the great banking houses which keep the pendulum of the world swinging true have grown to importance through just such young men as yourself, who were honest and had high ideals and who so impressed their own personalities upon everybody about them—customers and employers—that the tone of the concern was raised at once and with it came a world-wide success. I have been thirty years on the Street and have watched the rise of half the firms about me, and in every single instance some one of the younger men—boys, many of them—has pulled the concern up and out of a quagmire and stood it on its feet. And the reverse is true: half the downfalls have come from those same juniors, who thought they knew some short road to success, which half the time was across disreputable back lots. Why not give up complaining and see what better things you can do? I'm not quite satisfied about your having stayed upstairs even to receive me. Your aunt loves society and the daughter—what did you say her name was—Corinne? Yes, Miss Corinne being young, loves to have a good time. Listen! do you hear?—there goes another waltz. Now, as long as you do live here, why not join in it too and help out the best you can?—and if you have anything of your own to offer in the way of good cheer, or thoughtfulness, or kindness, or whatever you do have which they lack—or rather what you think they lack—wouldn't it be wiser—wouldn't it—if you will permit me, my lad—be a little BETTER BRED to contribute something of your own excellence to the festivity?”
It was now Jack's turn to lean back in his chair and cover his face, but with two ashamed hands. Not since his father's death had any one talked to him like this—never with so much tenderness and truth and with every word meant for his good. All his selfrighteousness, his silly conceit and vainglory stood out before him. What an ass he had been. What a coxcomb. What a boor, really.
“What would you have me do?” he asked, a tone of complete surrender in his voice. The portrait and Peter were one and the same! His father had come to life.
“I don't know yet. We'll think about that another time, but we won't do it now. I ought to be ashamed of myself for having spoiled your evening by such serious talk (he wasn't ashamed—he had come for that very purpose). Now show me some of your books and tell me what you read, and what you love best.”
He was out of the chair before he ceased speaking, his heels striking the floor, bustling about in his prompt, exact manner, examining the few curios and keepsakes on the mantel and tables, running his eyes over the rows of bindings lining the small bookcase; his hand on Jack's shoulder whenever the boy opened some favorite author to hunt for a passage to read aloud to Peter, listening with delight, whether the quotation was old or new to him.
Jack, suddenly remembering that his guest was standing, tried to lead him back to his seat by the fire, but Peter would have none of it.
“No—too late. Why, bless me, it's after eleven o'clock! Hear the music—they are still at it. Now I'm going to insist that you go down and have a turn around the room yourself; there were such a lot of pretty girls when I came in.”
“Too late for that, too,” laughed Jack, merry once more. “Corinne wouldn't speak to me if I showed my face now, and then there will be plenty more dances which I can go to, and so make it all up with her. I'm not yet as sorry as I ought to be about this dance. Your being here has been such a delight. May I—may—I come and see you some time?”
“That's just what you will do, and right away. Just as soon as my dear sister Felicia comes down, and she'll be here very soon. I'll send for you, never fear. Yes, the right sleeve first, and now my hat and umbrella. Ah, here they are. Now, good night, my boy, and thank you for letting me come.”
“You know I dare not go down with you,” explained Jack with a smile.
“Oh, yes—I know—I know. Good night—” and the sharp, quick tread of the old man grew fainter and fainter as he descended the stairs.
Jack waited, craning his head, until he caught a glimpse of the glistening head as it passed once more under the lantern, then he went into his room and shut the door.
Had he followed behind his guest he would have witnessed a little comedy which would have gone far in wiping clean all trace of his uncle's disparaging remarks of the morning. He would have enjoyed, too, Parkins's amazement. As the Receiving Teller of the Exeter Bank reached the hall floor the President of the Clearing House—the most distinguished man in the Street and one to whom Breen kotowed with genuflections equalling those of Parkins—accompanied by his daughter and followed by the senior partner of Breen & Co., were making their way to the front door. The second man in the chocolate livery with the potato-bug waistcoat had brought the Magnate's coat and hat, and Parkins stood with his hand on the door-knob. Then, to the consternation of both master and servant, the great man darted forward and seized Peter's hand.
“Why, my dear Mr. Grayson! This is indeed a pleasure. I didn't see you—were you inside?”
“No—I've been upstairs with young Mr. Breen,” replied Peter, with a comprehensive bow to Host, Magnate and Magnate's daughter. Then, with the grace and dignity of an ambassador quitting a salon, he passed out into the night.
Breen found his breath first: “And you know him?”
“Know him!” cried the Magnate—“of course I know him! One of the most delightful men in New York; and I'm glad that you do—you're luckier than I—try as I may I can hardly ever get him inside my house.”
I was sitting up for the old fellow when he entered his cosey red room and dropped into a chair before the fire. I had seen the impression the young man had made upon him at the dinner and was anxious to learn the result of his visit. I had studied the boy somewhat myself, noting his bright smile, clear, open face without a trace of guile, and the enthusiasm that took possession of him when his friend won the prize. That he was outside the class of young men about him I could see from a certain timidity of glance and gesture—as if he wanted to be kept in the background. Would the old fellow, I wondered, burden his soul with still another charge?
Peter was laughing when he entered; he had laughed all the way down-town, he told me. What particularly delighted him—and here he related the Portman incident—was the change in Breen's face when old Portman grasped his hand so cordially.
“Made of pinchbeck, my dear Major, both of them, and yet how genuine it looks on the surface, and what a lot of it is in circulation. Quite as good as the real thing if you don't know the difference,” and again he laughed heartily.
“And the boy,” I asked, “was he disappointing?”
“Young Breen?—not a bit of it. He's like all the young fellows who come up here from the South—especially the country districts—and he's from western Maryland, he says. Got queer ideas about work and what a gentleman should do to earn his living—same old talk. Hot-house plants most of them—never amount to anything, really, until they are pruned and set out in the cold.”
“Got any sense?” I ventured.
“No, not much—not yet—but he's got temperament and refinement and a ten commandments' code of morals.”
“Rather rare, isn't it?” I asked.
“Yes—perhaps so.”
“And I suppose you are going to take him up and do for him, like the others.”
Peter picked up the poker and made a jab at the fire; then he answered slowly:
“Well, Major, I can't tell yet—not positively. But he's certainly worth saving.”