That Jack hardly closed his eyes that night, and that the first thing he did after opening them the next morning was to fly to Peter for comfort and advice, goes without saying. Even a sensible, well-balanced young man—and our Jack, to the Scribe's great regret, is none of these—would have done this with his skin still smarting from an older man's verbal scorching—especially a man like his uncle, provided, of course, he had a friend like Peter within reach. How much more reasonable, therefore, to conclude that a man so quixotic as our young hero would seek similar relief.
As to the correctness of the details of this verbal scorching, so minutely described in the preceding chapter, should the reader ask how it is possible for the Scribe to set down in exact order the goings-on around a dinner-table to which he was not invited, as well as the particulars of a family row where only two persons participated—neither of whom was himself—and this, too, in the dead of night, with the outside doors locked and the shades and curtains drawn—he must plead guilty without leaving the prisoner's dock.
And yet he asks in all humility—is the play not enough?—or must he lift the back-drop and bring into view the net-work of pulleys and lines, the tanks of moonlight gas and fake properties of papier-mache that produce the illusion? As a compromise would it not be the better way after this for him to play the Harlequin, popping in and out at the unexpected moment, helping the plot here and there by a gesture, a whack, or a pirouette; hobnobbing with Peter or Miss Felicia, and their friends; listening to Jack's and Ruth's talk, or following them at a distance, whenever his presence might embarrass either them or the comedy?
This being agreed upon, we will leave our hero this bright morning—the one succeeding the row with his uncle—at the door of Peter's bank, confident that Jack can take care of himself.
And the confidence is not misplaced. Only once did the boy's glance waver, and that was when his eyes sought the window facing Peter's desk. Some egg other than Peter's was nesting on the open ledger spread out on the Receiving Teller's desk—not an ostrich egg of a head at all, but an evenly parted, well-combed, well-slicked brown wig, covering the careful pate of one of the other clerks who, in the goodness of his heart, was filling Peter's place for the day.
Everybody being busy—too busy to answer questions outside of payments and deposits—Patrick, the porter, must necessarily conduct the negotiations.
“No, sur; he's not down to-day—” was the ever-watchful Patrick's answer to Jack's anxious inquiry. “His sister's come from the country and he takes a day off now and thin when she's here. You'll find him up at his place in Fifteenth Street, I'm thinkin'.”
Jack bit his lip. Here was another complication. Not to find Peter at the Bank meant a visit to his rooms—on his holiday, too—and when he doubtless wished to be alone with Miss Felicia. And yet how could he wait a moment longer? He himself had sent word to the office of Breen & Co. that he would not be there that day—a thing he had never done before—nor did he intend to go on the morrow—not until he knew where he stood. While his uncle had grossly misunderstood him, and, for that matter, grossly insulted him, he had neither admitted nor denied the outrage on Gilbert.
When he did—this question had only now begun to loom up—where would he go and what would he do? There was but little money due him at the office—and none would come—until the next month's pay—hardly enough, in any event, to take him back to his Maryland home, even if that refuge were still open to him. What then would become of him? Peter was, in fact, his main and only reliance. Peter he must see, and at once.
Not that he wavered or grew faint at heart when he thought of his defeat the night before. He was only thinking of his exit and the way to make it. “Always take your leave like a gentleman,” was one of his father's maxims. This he would try his best to accomplish.
Mrs. McGuffey, in white cap and snow-white apron, now that Miss Felicia had arrived, was the medium of communication this time:
“Indeed, they are both in—this way, sir, and let me have your hat and coat.”
It was a delightful party that greeted the boy. Peter was standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, his coat-tails hooked over his wrists. Miss Felicia sat by a small table pretending to sew. Holker Morris was swallowed up in one of Peter's big easy-chairs, only the top of his distinguished head visible, while a little chub of a man, gray-haired, spectacled and plainly dressed, was seated behind him, the two talking in an undertone.
“Why, Breen!—why, my dear boy!—And you have a holiday, too? How did you know I was home?” cried Peter, extending both hands in the joy of his greeting.
“I stopped at the Bank, sir.”
“Did you?—and who told you?”
“The janitor, I suppose.”
“Oh, the good Patrick! Well, well! Holker, you remember young Breen.”
Holker did remember, for a wonder, and extended one hand to prove it, and Felicia—but the boy was already bending over her, all his respect and admiration in his eyes. The little chub of a man was now on his feet, standing in an attentive attitude, ready to take his cue from Peter.
“And now, my boy, turn this way, and let me introduce you to my very dear friend, Mr. Isaac Cohen.”
A pudgy hand was thrust out and the spectacled little man, his eyes on the boy, said he was glad to know any friend of Mr. Grayson, and resuming his seat continued his conversation in still lower tones with the great architect.
Jack stood irresolute for an instant, not knowing whether to make some excuse for his evidently inopportune visit and return later, or to keep his seat until the others had gone. Miss Felicia, who had not taken her gaze from the lad since he entered the room, called him to her side.
“Now, tell me what you are all doing at home, and how your dear aunt is, and—Miss Corinne, isn't it? And that very bright young fellow who came with you at Ruth's tea?”
It was the last subject that Jack wanted to discuss, but he stumbled through it as best he could, and ended in hoping, in a halting tone, that Miss MacFarlane was well.
“Ruth! Oh, she is a darling! Didn't you think so?”
Jack blushed to the roots of his hair, but Miss Felicia's all-comprehensive glance never wavered. This was the young man whom Ruth had been mysterious about. She intended to know how far the affair had gone, and it would have been useless, she knew, for Jack to try to deceive her.
“All our Southern girls are lovely,” he answered in all sincerity.
“And you like them better than the New York belles?”
“I don't know any.”
“Then that means that you do.”
“Do what?”
“Do like them better.”
The boy thought for a moment.
“Yes, and Miss MacFarlane best of all; she is so—so—” the boy faltered—“so sincere, and just the kind of girl you would trust with anything. Why, I told her all about myself before I'd known her half an hour.”
“Yes, she was greatly pleased.” The match-making instinct was always uppermost in Miss Felicia's moves, and then, again, this young man had possibilities, his uncle being rich and he being his only nephew.
“Oh, then she told you!” The boy's heart gave a great leap. Perhaps, after all, Ruth had not heard—at all events she did not despise him.
“No, I told her myself. The only thing that seemed to worry Ruth was that you had not told her enough. If I remember right, she said you were very shy.”
“And she did not say anything about—” Jack stopped. He had not intended to put the question quite in this way, although he was still in doubt. Give this keen-eyed, white-haired old lady but an inkling of what was uppermost in his mind and he knew she would have its every detail.
“About what?” Here Miss Felicia's eyes were suddenly diverted, and became fastened on the short figure of Mr. Isaac Cohen, who had risen to his feet and stood talking in the most confidential way with Morris—Peter listening intently. Such phrases as “Better make the columns of marble,” from Morris, and, “Well, I will talk it over with the Rabbi,” from the tailor, reached his ears. Further relief came when Miss Felicia rose from her chair with her hand extended to Morris, who was already taking leave of Peter and all danger was passed when host and hostess conducted the tailor and the architect to the door; Morris bending over Miss Felicia's hand and kissing it with the air of a courtier suddenly aroused by the appearance of royalty (he had been completely immersed in Cohen's talk), and the tailor bowing to her on his way out without even so much as touching the tips of her fingers.
“There, my dear Breen,” said Peter, when he had adjusted his cravat before the glass and brushed a few stray hairs over his temples, “that's a man it would do you an immense amount of good to know; the kind of a man you call worthwhile. Not only does he speak three languages, Hebrew being one of them, but he can talk on any subject from Greek temples to the raising of violets. Morris thinks the world of him—So do I.”
“Yes, I heard him say something about columns.”
“Oh!—then you overheard! Yes, they are for the new synagogue that Morris is building. Cohen is chairman of the committee.”
“And he is the banker, too, I suppose?” rejoined Jack, in a tone which showed his lack of interest in both man and subject. It was Peter's ear he wanted, and at once.
The old man's eyes twinkled: “Banker!—not a bit of it. He's a tailor, my dear boy—a most delightful gentleman tailor, who works in the basement below us and who only yesterday pressed the coat I have on.” Here Peter surveyed himself with a comprehensive glance. “All the respectable people in New York are not money mad.” Then, seeing Jack's look of astonishment over the announcement, he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and said with a twinkle of his eye and a little laugh: “Only one tailor—not nine—my boy, was required to make Mr. Cohen a man. And now about yourself. Why are you not at work? Old fellows like me once in a while have a holiday—but young fellows! Come!—What is it brings you here during business hours? Anything I can help you in?—anything at home?” and Peter's eyes bored holes in the boy's brain.
Jack glanced at Miss Felicia, who was arranging the roses Morris had brought her, and then said in a half whisper: “I have had a row with my uncle, sir. Maybe I had better come some other day, when—”
“No—out with it! Row with your uncle, eh? Rows with one's uncles are too commonplace to get mysterious over, and, then, we have no secrets. Ten chances to one I shall tell Felicia every word you say after you've gone, so she might as well hear it at first-hand. Felicia, this young fellow is so thin-skinned he is afraid you will laugh at him.”
“Oh, he knows better. I have just been telling him how charming he must be to have won Miss MacFarlane's good opinion,” rejoined his sister as she moved her work-basket nearer her elbow.
And then, with mind at rest, now that he was sure Ruth had not heard, and with eyes again blazing as his thoughts dwelt upon the outrage, he poured out his story, Miss Felicia listening intently, a curious expression on her face, Peter grave and silent, his gaze now on the boy, now on the hearth-rug on which he stood. Only once did a flash illumine his countenance; that was when Jack reached that part of his narrative which told of the denunciation he had flung in his uncle's face concerning the methods by which poor Gilbert had been ruined.
“And you dared tell your uncle that, you young firebrand?”
“Yes, Mr. Grayson, I had to; what else could I say? Don't you think it cruel to cheat like that?”
“And what did he say?” asked Peter.
“He would not listen—he swore at me—told me—well, he ordered me out of the room and had the lights put out.”
“And it served you right, you young dog! Well, upon my word! Here you are without a dollar in the world except what your uncle pays you, and you fly off at a tangent and insult him in his own house—and you his guest, remember. Well! Well! What are we coming to? Felicia, did you ever hear of such a performance?”
Miss Felicia made no answer. She knew from her brother's tone that there was not a drop of bitterness in any one of the words that fell from his lips; she had heard him talk that way dozens of times before, when he was casting about for some means of letting the culprit down the easier. She even detected a slight wrinkling of the corners of his mouth as the denunciation rolled out.
Not so Jack: To him the end of the world had come. Peter was his last resort—that one so good and so clear-headed had not flared up at once over the villainy was the severest blow of all. Perhaps he WAS a firebrand; perhaps, after all, it was none of his business; perhaps—perhaps—now that Ruth would not blame him, knew nothing, in fact, of the disgraceful episode, it would have been better for him to have ignored the whole matter and taken Garry's advice.
“Then I have done wrong again, Mr. Grayson?” he said at last, in so pleading a tone that even Miss Felicia's reserve was on the point of giving away.
“Yes, in the manner in which you acted. Your father wouldn't have lost his temper and called people names. Gentlemen, my dear boy, don't do that sort of thing. They make up their minds about what they want to do and then do it quietly, and, let me say, with a certain amount of courtesy.”
“Then, what must I do?” All the fight was out of the lad now.
“Why, go back to your desk in the office and your very delightful suite of rooms at your uncle's. Tell him you are sorry you let your feelings get the best of you; then, when you have entirely quieted down, you and I will put our heads together and see what can be done to improve matters. And that, let me tell you, my dear boy, is going to be rather a difficult thing, for you see you are rather particular as to what you should and should not do to earn your living.” Peter's wrinkles had now crept up his cheeks and were playing hide and seek with the twinkles in his eyes. “Of course any kind of healthy work—such, for instance, as hauling a chain through a swamp, carrying a level, prospecting for oil, or copper, or gold—all very respectable occupations for some men—are quite impossible in your case. But we will think it out and find something easier—something that won't soil your hands, and—”
“Please don't, Mr. Grayson,” interrupted Jack. The boy had begun to see through the raillery now. “I will do anything you want me to do.”
Peter burst into a laugh and grabbed him by both shoulders: “Of course, my dear boy, you will do anything except what you believe to be wrong. That's right—right as can be; nobody wants you to do any different, and—”
The opening of a door leading into the hall caused Peter to stop in his harangue and turn his head. Mrs. McGuffey was ushering in a young woman whose radiant face was like a burst of sunshine. Peter strained his eyes and then sprang forward:
“Why, Ruth!”
There was no doubt about it! That young woman, her cheeks like two June peonies, her eyes dancing, the daintiest and prettiest hat in the world on her head, was already half across the room and close to Peter's rug before Jack could even realize that he and she were breathing the same air.
“Oh! I just could not wait a minute longer!” she cried in a joyous tone. “I had such a good time yesterday, dear aunt Felicia, and—Why!—it is you, Mr. Breen, and have you come to tell aunty the same thing? Wasn't it lovely?”
Then Jack said that it was lovely, and that he hadn't come for any such purpose—then that he had—and then Peter patted her hand and told her she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen in all his life, and that he was going to throw overboard all his other sweethearts at once and cleave to her alone; and Miss Felicia vowed that she was the life of the party; and Jack devoured her with his eyes, his heart thumping away at high pressure; and so the moments fled until the blithesome young girl, saying she had not a minute to spare, as she had to meet her father, who would not wait, readjusted her wraps, kissed Miss Felicia on both cheeks, sent another flying through the air toward Peter from the tips of her fingers, and with Jack as escort—he also had to see a friend who would not wait a minute—danced out of the room and so on down to the street.
The Scribe will not follow them very far in their walk uptown. Both were very happy, Jack because the scandal he had been dreading, since he had last looked into her eyes, had escaped her ears, and Ruth because of all the young men she had met in her brief sojourn in New York this young Mr. Breen treated her with most consideration.
While the two were making their way through the crowded streets, Jack helping her over the crossings, picking out the drier spots for her dainty feet to step upon, shielding her from the polluting touch of the passing throng, Miss Felicia had resumed her sewing—it was a bit of lace that needed a stitch here and there—and Peter, dragging a chair before the fire, had thrown himself into its depths, his long, thin white fingers open fan-like to its blaze.
“You are just wasting your time, Peter, over that young man,” Miss Felicia said at last, snipping the end of a thread with her scissors. “Better buy him a guitar with a broad blue ribbon and start him off troubadouring, or, better still, put him into a suit of tin armor and give him a lance. He doesn't belong to this world. It's just as well Ruth did not hear that rigmarole. Charming manners, I admit—lovely, sitting on a cushion looking up into some young girl's eyes, but he will never make his way here with those notions. Why he should want to anger his uncle, who is certainly most kind to him, is past finding out. He's stupid, that's what he is—just stupid!”—to break with your bread and butter and to defy those who could be of service to you being an unpardonable sin with Miss Felicia. No, he would not do at all for Ruth.
Peter settled himself deeper in his chair and studied the cheery blaze between his outspread fingers.
“That's the very thing will save him, Felicia.”
“What—his manners?”
“No—his adorable stupidity. I grant you he's fighting windmills, but, then, my dear, don't forget that he's FIGHTING—that's something.”
“But they are only windmills, and, more extraordinary still, this one is grinding corn to keep him from starving,” and she folded up her sewing preparatory to leaving the room.
Peter's fingers closed tight: “I'm not so sure of that,” he answered gravely.
Miss Felicia had risen from her seat and was now bending over the back of his chair, her spare sharp elbows resting on its edge, her two hands clasping his cheeks.
“And are you really going to add this stupid boy to your string, you goose of a Peter?” she asked in a bantering tone, as her fingers caressed his temples. “Don't forget Mosenthal and little Perkins, and the waiter you brought home and fed for a week, and sent away in your best overcoat, which he pawned the next day; or the two boys at college. Aren't you ever going to learn?” and she leaned forward and kissed the top of his bald head.
Peter's only reply was to reach up and smooth her jewelled fingers with his own. He remembered them all; there was an excuse, of course, he reminded her, for his action in each and every case. But for him Mosenthal—really a great violinist—would have starved, little Perkins would have been sent to the reformatory, and the waiter to the dogs. That none of them, except the two college boys, had ever thanked him for his assistance—a fact well known to Miss Felicia—never once crossed his mind—wouldn't have made any difference if it had.
“But this young Breen is worth saving, Felicia,” he answered at last.
“From what—the penitentiary?” she laughed—this time with a slight note of anger in her voice.
“No, you foolish thing—much worse.”
“From what, then?”
“From himself.”
Long after his sister had left the room Peter kept his seat by the fire, his eyes gazing into the slumbering coals. His holiday had been a happy one until Jack's entrance: Morris had come to an early breakfast and had then run down and dragged up Cohen so that he could talk with him in comfort and away from the smell of the tailor's goose and the noise of the opening and shutting of the shop door; Miss Felicia had summoned all her good humor and patience (she did not always approve of Peter's acquaintances—the little tailor being one), and had received Cohen as she would have done a savant from another country—one whose personal appearance belied his intellect but who on no account must be made aware of that fact, and Peter himself had spent the hour before and after breakfast—especially the hour after, when the Bank always claimed him—in pulling out and putting back one book after another from the shelves of his small library, reading a page here and a line there, the lights and shadows that crossed his eager, absorbed face, an index of his enjoyment.
All this had been spoiled by a wild, untamed colt of a boy whom he could not help liking in spite of his peculiarities.
And yet, was his sister not right? Why bother himself any more about a man so explosive and so tactless—and he WAS a man, so far as years and stature went, who, no matter what he might attempt for his advancement, would as surely topple it over as he would a house of cards. That the boy's ideals were high, and his sincerity beyond question, was true, but what use would these qualities be to him if he lacked the common-sense to put them into practice?
All this he told to the fire—first to one little heap of coals—then another—snuggling together—and then to the big back-log scarred all over in its fight to keep everybody warm and happy.
Suddenly his round, glistening head ceased bobbing back and forth; his lips, which had talked incessantly without a sound falling from them, straightened; his gesticulating fingers tightened into a hard knot and the old fellow rose from his easy-chair. He had made up his mind.
Then began a search through his desk in and out of the pigeon-holes, under a heap of letters—most of them unanswered; beneath a package tied with tape, until his eyes fell upon an envelope sealed with wax, in which was embedded the crest of the ancestors of the young gentleman whose future had so absorbed his thoughts. It was Mrs. Breen's acceptance of Miss Felicia's invitation to Miss MacFarlane's tea.
“Ah, here it is! Now I'll find the number—yes, 864—I thought it was a “4”—but I didn't want to make any mistake.”
This done, and the note with the number and street of Jack's uncle's house spread out before him, Peter squared his elbows, took a sheet of paper from a drawer, covered it with half a dozen lines beginning “My dear Breen—” enclosed it in an envelope and addressed it to “Mr. John Breen, care of Arthur Breen, Esq.,” etc. This complete, he affixed the stamp in the upper left-hand corner, and with the letter fast in his hand disappeared in his bedroom, from which he emerged ten minutes later in full walking costume, even to his buckskin gloves and shiny high hat, not to mention a brand-new silk scarf held in place by his diamond tear-drop, the two in high relief above the lapels of his tightly buttoned surtout.
“No, Mrs. McGuffey,” he said with a cheery smile as he passed out of the door (she had caught sight of the letter and had stretched out her hand)—“No—I am going for a walk, and I'll mail it myself.”
Whatever the function—whether it was a cosey dinner for the congenial few, a crowded reception for the uncongenial many, or a coming-out party for some one of the eager-expectant buds just bursting into bloom—most of whom he had known from babyhood—Peter was always ready with his “Of course I'll come—” or “Nothing would delight me more—” or the formal “Mr. Grayson accepts with great pleasure,” etc., unless the event should fall upon a Saturday night; then there was certain to be a prompt refusal.
Even Miss Felicia recognized this unbreakable engagement and made her plans accordingly. So did good Mrs. McGuffey, who selected this night for her own social outings; and so did most of his intimate friends who were familiar with his habits.
On any other night you might, or you might not, find Peter at home, dependent upon his various engagements, but if you really wanted to get hold of his hand, or his ear, or the whole or any other part of his delightful body, and if by any mischance you happened to select a Saturday night for your purpose, you must search for him at the Century. To spend this one evening at his favorite club had been his custom for years—ever since he had been elected to full membership—a date so far back in the dim past that the oldest habitue had to search the records to make sure of the year, and this custom he still regularly kept up.
That the quaint old club-house was but a stone's throw from his own quarters in Fifteenth Street made no difference; he would willingly have tramped to Murray Hill and beyond—even as far as the big reservoir, had the younger and more progressive element among the members picked the institution up bodily and moved it that far—as later on they did.
Not that he favored any such innovation: “Move up-town! Why, my dear sir!” he protested, when the subject was first mentioned, “is there nothing in the polish of these old tables and chairs, rubbed bright by the elbows of countless good fellows, that appeals to you? Do you think any modern varnish can replace it? Here I have sat for thirty years or more, and—please God!—here I want to continue to sit.”
He was at his own small table in the front room overlooking the street when he spoke—his by right of long use, as it was also of Morris, MacFarlane, Wright, old Partridge the painter, and Knight the sculptor. For years this group of Centurions, after circling the rooms on meeting nights, criticising the pictures and helping themselves to the punch, had dropped into these same seats by the side of Peter.
And these were not the only chairs tacitly recognized as carrying special privileges by reason of long usage. Over in the corner between the two rooms could be found Bayard Taylor's chair—his for years, from which he dispensed wisdom, adventure and raillery to a listening coterie—King, MacDonough and Collins among them, while near the stairs, his great shaggy head glistening in the overhead light, Parke Godwin held court, with Sterling, Martin and Porter, to say nothing of still older habitues who in the years of their membership were as much a part of the fittings of the club as the smoke-begrimed portraits which lined its walls.
On this Saturday night he had stepped into the clubhouse with more than his usual briskness. Sweeping a comprehensive glance around as he entered, as if looking for some one in the hall, he slipped off his overcoat and hat and handed both to the negro servant in charge of the cloak-room.
“George.”
“Yes, Mr. Grayson.”
“If anybody inquires for me you will find me either on this floor or in the library above. Don't forget, and don't make any mistake.
“No, suh—ain't goin' to be no mistake.”
This done, the old gentleman moved to the mirror, and gave a sidelong glance at his perfectly appointed person—he had been dining at the Portmans', had left the table early, and was in full evening dress.
The inspection proved that the points of his collar wanted straightening the thousandth part of an inch, and that his sparse gray locks needed combing a wee bit further toward his cheek bones. These, with a certain rebellious fold in his necktie, having been brought into place, the guardian of the Exeter entered the crowded room, picked a magazine from the shelves and dropped into his accustomed seat.
Holker Morris and Lagarge now strolled in and drawing up to a small table adjoining Peter's touched a tiny bell. This answered, and the order given, the two renewed a conversation which had evidently been begun outside, and which was of so absorbing a character that for a moment Peter's face, half hidden by his book, was unnoticed.
“Oh!—that's you, Methusaleh, is it!” cried Morris at last. “Move over—have something?”
Peter looked up smiling: “Not now, Holker. I will later.”
Morris kept on talking. Lagarge, his companion—a thin, cadaverous-looking man with a big head and the general air of having been carved out of an old root—a great expert in ceramics—listening intently, bobbing his head in toy-mandarin fashion whenever one of Holker's iconoclasms cleared the air.
“Suppose they did pay thirty thousand dollars for it,” Holker insisted, slapping his knee with his outspread palm. “That makes the picture no better and no worse. If it was mine, and I could afford it, I would sell it to anybody who loved it for thirty cents rather than sell it to a man who didn't, for thirty millions. When Troyon painted it he put his soul into it, and you can no more tack a price to that than you can stick an auction card on a summer cloud, or appraise the perfume from a rose garden. It has no money value, Legarge, and never will have. You might as well list sunsets on the Stock Exchange.”
“But Troyon had to live, Holker,” chimed in Harrington, who, with the freedom accorded every member of the club—one of its greatest charms—had just joined the group and sat listening.
“Yes,” rejoined Morris, a quizzical expression crossing his face—“that was the curse of it. He was born a man and had a stomach instead of being born a god without one. As to living—he didn't really live—no great painter really lives until he is dead. And that's the way it should be—they would never have become immortal with a box full of bonds among their assets. They would have stopped work. Now they can rest in their graves with the consciousness that they have done their level best.”
“There is one thing would lift him out of it, or ought to,” remarked Harrington, with a glance around the circle. “I am, of course, speaking of Troyon.”
“What?” asked Morris.
“The news that Roberts paid thirty thousand dollars for a picture for which the painter was glad to get three thousand francs,” a reply which brought a roar from the group, Morris joining in heartily.
The circle had now widened to the filling of a dozen chairs, Morris's way of putting things being one of the features of club nights, he, as usual, dominating the talk, calling out “Period”—his way of notifying some speaker to come to a full stop, whenever he broke away from the facts and began soaring into hyperbolics—Morgan, Harrington and the others laughing in unison at his sallies.
The clouds of tobacco smoke grew thicker. The hum of conversation louder; especially at an adjoining table where one lean old Academician in a velvet skull cap was discussing the new impressionistic craze which had just begun to show itself in the work of the younger men. This had gone on for some minutes when the old man turned upon them savagely and began ridiculing the new departure as a cloak to hide poor drawing, an outspoken young painter asserting in their defence, that any technique was helpful if it would kill off the snuff-box school in which the man under the skull cap held first place.
Morris had lent an ear to the discussion and again took up the cudgels.
“You young fellows are right,” he cried, twisting his body toward their table. The realists have had their day; they work a picture to death; all of them. If you did but know it, it really takes two men to paint a great picture—one to do the work and the other to kill him when he has done enough.”
“Pity some of your murderers, Holker, didn't start before they stretched their canvases,” laughed Harrington.
And so the hours sped on.
All this time Peter had been listening with one ear wide open—the one nearest the door—for any sound in that direction. French masterpieces, Impressionism and the rest of it did not interest him to-night. Something else was stirring him—something he had been hugging to his heart all day.
Only the big and little coals in his own fireplace in Fifteenth Street, and perhaps the great back-log, beside himself, knew the cause. He had not taken Miss Felicia into his confidence—that would never have done—might, indeed, have spoilt everything. Even when he had risen from Morris's coterie to greet Henry MacFarlane—Ruth's father—his intimate friend for years, and who answered his hand-shake with—“Well, you old rascal—what makes you look so happy?—anybody left you a million?”—even then he gave no inkling of the amount of bottled sunshine he was at the precise moment carrying inside his well-groomed body, except to remark with all his twinkles and wrinkles scampering loose:
“Seeing you, Henry—” an answer which, while it only excited derision and a sly thrust of his thumb into Peter's ribs, was nevertheless literally true if the distinguished engineer did but know it.
It was only when the hours dragged on and his oft-consulted watch marked ten o'clock that the merry wrinkles began to straighten and the eyes to wander.
When an additional ten minutes had ticked themselves out, and then a five and then a ten more, the old fellow became so nervous that he began to make a tour of the club-house, even ascending the stairs, searching the library and dining-room, scanning each group and solitary individual he passed, until, thoroughly discouraged, he regained his seat only to press a bell lying among some half-empty glasses. The summoned waiter listened attentively, his head bent low to catch the whispered order, and then disappeared noiselessly in the direction of the front door, Peter's fingers meanwhile beating an impatient staccato on the arm of his chair.
Nothing resulting from this experiment he at last gave up all hope and again sought MacFarlane who was trying to pound into the head of a brother engineer some new theory of spontaneous explosions.
Hardly had he drawn up a chair to listen—he was a better listener to-night, somehow, than a talker, when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Jack bending over him.
With a little cry of joy Peter sprang to his feet, both palms outstretched: “Oh!—you're here at last! Didn't I say nine o'clock, my dear boy, or am I wrong? Well, so you are here it's all right.” Then with face aglow he turned to MacFarlane: “Henry, here's a young fellow you ought to know; his name's John Breen, and he's from your State.”
The engineer stopped short in his talk and absorbed Jack from his neatly brushed hair, worn long at the back of his neck, to his well-shod feet, and held out his hand.
“From Maryland? So am I; I was raised down in Prince George County. Glad to know you. Are you any connection of the Breens of Ann Arundle?”
“Yes, sir—all my people came from Ann Arundle. My father was Judge Breen,” answered Jack with embarrassment. He had not yet become accustomed to the novelty of the scene around him.
“Now I know just where you belong. My father and yours were friends. I have often heard him speak of Judge Breen. And did you not meet my daughter at Miss Grayson's the other day? She told me she had met a Mr. Breen from our part of the country.”
Jack's eyes danced. Was this what Peter had invited him to the club for? Now it was all clear. And then again he had not said a word about his being in the Street, or connected with it in any way. Was there ever such a good Peter?
“Oh, yes, sir!—and I hope she is very well.”
The engineer said she was extremely well, never better in her life, and that he was delighted to meet a son of his old friend—then, turning to the others, immediately forgot Jack's existence, and for the time being his daughter, in the discussion still going on around him.
The young fellow settled himself in his seat and looked about him—at the smoke-stained ceiling, the old portraits and quaint fittings and furniture—more particularly at the men. He would have liked to talk to Ruth's father a little longer, but he felt dazed and ill at ease—out of his element, somehow—although he remembered the same kind of people at his father's house, except that they wore different clothes.
But Peter did not leave him long in meditation. There were other surprises for him upstairs, in the small dining-room opening out of the library, where a long table was spread with eatables and drinkables—salads, baby sausages, escaloped oysters, devilled crabs and other dishes dear to old and new members. Here men were met standing in groups, their plates in their hands, or seated at the smaller tables, when a siphon and a beer bottle, or a mug of Bass would be added to their comfort.
It was there the Scribe met him for the second time, my first being the Morris dinner, when he sat within speaking distance. I had heard of him, of course, as Peter's new protege—indeed, the old fellow had talked of nothing else, and so I was glad to renew the acquaintance. I found him to be like all other young fellows of his class—I had lived among his people, and knew—rather shy, with a certain deferential air toward older people—but with the composure belonging to unconscious youth—no fidgeting or fussing—modest, unassertive—his big brown eyes under their heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes had passed before I saw why Peter liked him, and I saw, too, why he liked Peter.
When I asked him—we had found three empty seats at a table—what impressed him most in the club, it being his first visit, he answered in his simple, direct way, that he thought it was the note of good-fellowship everywhere apparent, the men greeting each other as if they really meant it. Another feature was the dress and faces of the members—especially the authors, to whom Peter had introduced him, whose books he had read, and whose personalities he had heard discussed, and who, to his astonishment, had turned out to be shabby-looking old fellows who smoked and drank, or played chess, like other ordinary mortals, and without pretence of any kind so far as he could detect.
“Just like one big family, isn't it, Mr. Grayson?” the boy said. “Don't you two gentlemen love to come here?”
“Yes.”
“They don't look like very rich men.”
“They're not. Now and then a camel crawls through but it is a tight squeeze,” remarked Peter arching his gray, bushy eyebrows, a smile hovering about his lips.
The boy laughed: “Well, then, how did they get here?”
“Principally because they lead decent lives, are not puffed up with conceit, have creative brains and put them to some honest use,” answered Peter.
The boy looked away for a moment and remarked quietly that about everybody he knew would fail in one or more of these qualifications. Then he added:
“And now tell me, Mr. Grayson, what most of them do—that gentleman, for instance, who is talking to the old man in the velvet cap.”
“That is General Norton, one of our most distinguished engineers. He is Consulting Engineer in the Croton Aqueduct Department, and his opinion is sought all over the country. He started life as a tow-boy on the Erie Canal, and when he was your age he was keeping tally of dump-cars from a cut on the Pennsylvania Railroad.”
Jack looked at the General in wonderment, but he was too much interested in the other persons about him to pursue the inquiry any further.
“And the man next to him—the one with his hand to his head?”
“I don't recall him, but the Major may.”
“That is Professor Hastings of Yale,” I replied—“perhaps the most eminent chemist in this or any other country.”
“And what did he do when he was a boy?” asked young Breen.
“Made pills, I expect, and washed out test tubes and retorts,” interrupted Peter, with a look on his face as if the poor professor were more to be pitied than commended.
“Did any of them dig?” asked the boy.
“What kind of digging?” inquired Peter.
“Well, the kind you spoke of the night you came to see me.”
“Oh, with their hands?” cried Peter with a laugh. “Well, now, let me see—” and his glance roved about the room. “There is Mr. Schlessinger, the Egyptologist, but of course he was after mummies, not dirt; and then there is—yes—that sun-burned young fellow of forty, talking to Mr. Eastman Johnson; he has been at work in Yucatan looking for Toltec ruins, because he told me his experience only a few nights ago; but then, of course, that can hardly be said to be—Oh!—now I have it. You see that tall man with side-whiskers, looking like a young bank president—my kind—my boy—well, he started life with a pick and shovel. The steel point of the pick if I remember rightly, turned up a nugget of gold that made him rich, but he DUG all the same, and he may again some day—you can't tell.”
It had all been a delightful experience for Jack and his face showed it, but it was not until after I left that the story of why he had come late was told. He had started several times to explain but the constant interruption of members anxious to shake Peter's hand, had always prevented.
“I haven't apologized for being late, sir,” Jack had said at last. “It was long after ten, I am afraid, but I could not help it.”
“No; what was the matter?”
“I didn't get the letter until half an hour before I reached here.”
“Why, I sent it to your uncle's house, and mailed it myself, just after you had gone out with Miss MacFarlane.”
“Yes, sir; but I am not at my uncle's house any more. I am staying with Garry Minott in his rooms; I have the sofa.”
Peter gave a low whistle.
“And you have given up your desk at the office as well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bless my soul, my boy! And what are you going to do now?”
“I don't know; but I will not go on as I have been doing. I can't, Mr. Grayson, and you must not ask it. I would rather sweep the streets. I have just seen poor Charley Gilbert and Mrs. Gilbert. He has not a dollar in the world, and is going West, he tells me.”
Peter reflected for a moment. It was all he could do to hide his delight.
“And what do your people say?”
“My aunt says I am an idiot, and Corinne won't speak to me.”
“And your uncle?”
“Nothing, to me. He told Garry that if I didn't come back in three days I should never enter his house or his office again.”
“But you are going back? Are you not?”
“No,—never. Not if I starve!”
Peter's eyes were twinkling when he related the conversation to me the next day.
“I could have hugged him, Major,” he said, when he finished, “and I would if we had not been at the club.”