JOHN
Ten days after Mr. Scobell's visit to General Poineau, John, Prince of
Mervo, ignorant of the greatness so soon to be thrust upon him, was
strolling thoughtfully along one of the main thoroughfares of that
outpost of civilization, Jersey City. He was a big young man, tall and
large of limb. His shoulders especially were of the massive type
expressly designed by nature for driving wide gaps in the opposing line
on the gridiron. He looked like one of nature's center-rushes, and had,
indeed, played in that position for Harvard during two strenuous
seasons. His face wore an expression of invincible good-humor. He had a
wide, good-natured mouth, and a pair of friendly gray eyes. One felt
that he liked his fellow men and would be surprised and pained if they
did not like him.
As he passed along the street, he looked a little anxious. Sherlock
Holmes--and possibly even Doctor Watson--would have deduced that he had
something on his conscience.
At the entrance to a large office building, he paused, and seemed to
hesitate. Then, as if he had made up his mind to face an ordeal, he
went in and pressed the button of the elevator.
Leaving the elevator at the third floor, he went down the passage, and
pushed open a door on which was inscribed the legend, "Westley, Martin
& Co."
A stout youth, walking across the office with his hands full of papers,
stopped in astonishment.
"Hello, John Maude!" he cried.
The young man grinned.
"Say, where have you been? The old man's been as mad as a hornet since
he found you had quit without leave. He was asking for you just now."
"I guess I'm up against it," admitted John cheerfully.
"Where did you go yesterday?"
John put the thing to him candidly, as man to man.
"See here, Spiller, suppose you got up one day and found it was a
perfectly bully morning, and remembered that the Giants were playing
the Athletics, and looked at your mail, and saw that someone had sent
you a pass for the game--"
"Were you at the ball-game? You've got the nerve! Didn't you know there
would be trouble?"
"Old man," said John frankly, "I could no more have turned down that
pass-- Oh, well, what's the use? It was just great. I suppose I'd
better tackle the boss now. It's got to be done."
It was not a task to which many would have looked forward. Most of
those who came into contact with Andrew Westley were afraid of him. He
was a capable rather than a lovable man, and too self-controlled to be
quite human. There was no recoil in him, no reaction after anger, as
there would have been in a hotter-tempered man. He thought before he
acted, but, when he acted, never yielded a step.
John, in all the years of their connection, had never been able to make
anything of him. At first, he had been prepared to like him, as he
liked nearly everybody. But Mr. Westley had discouraged all advances,
and, as time went by, his nephew had come to look on him as something
apart from the rest of the world, one of those things which no fellow
could understand.
On Mr. Westley's side, there was something to be said in extenuation of
his attitude. John reminded him of his father, and he had hated the
late Prince of Mervo with a cold hatred that had for a time been the
ruling passion of his life. He had loved his sister, and her married
life had been one long torture to him, a torture rendered keener by the
fact that he was powerless to protect either her happiness or her
money. Her money was her own, to use as she pleased, and the use which
pleased her most was to give it to her husband, who could always find a
way of spending it. As to her happiness, that was equally out of his
control. It was bound up in her Prince, who, unfortunately, was a bad
custodian for it. At last, an automobile accident put an end to His
Highness's hectic career (and, incidentally, to that of a blonde lady
from the _Folies Bergeres_), and the Princess had returned to her
brother's home, where, a year later, she died, leaving him in charge of
her infant son.
Mr. Westley's desire from the first had been to eliminate as far as
possible all memory of the late Prince. He gave John his sister's name,
Maude, and brought him up as an American, in total ignorance of his
father's identity. During all the years they had spent together, he had
never mentioned the Prince's name.
He disliked John intensely. He fed him, clothed him, sent him to
college, and gave him a place in his office, but he never for a moment
relaxed his bleakness of front toward him. John was not unlike his
father in appearance, though built on a larger scale, and, as time went
on, little mannerisms, too, began to show themselves, that reminded Mr.
Westley of the dead man, and killed any beginnings of affection.
John, for his part, had the philosophy which goes with perfect health.
He fitted his uncle into the scheme of things, or, rather, set him
outside them as an irreconcilable element, and went on his way enjoying
life in his own good-humored fashion.
It was only lately, since he had joined the firm, that he had been
conscious of any great strain. College had given him a glimpse of a
larger life, and the office cramped him. He felt vaguely that there
were bigger things in the world which he might be doing. His best
friends, of whom he now saw little, were all men of adventure and
enterprise, who had tried their hand at many things; men like Jimmy
Pitt, who had done nearly everything that could be done before coming
into an unexpected half-million; men like Rupert Smith, who had been at
Harvard with him and was now a reporter on the _News_; men like
Baker, Faraday, Williams--he could name half-a-dozen, all men who were
_doing_ something, who were out on the firing line.
He was not a man who worried. He had not that temperament. But
sometimes he would wonder in rather a vague way whether he was not
allowing life to slip by him a little too placidly. An occasional
yearning for something larger would attack him. There seemed to be
something in him that made for inaction. His soul was sleepy.
If he had been told of the identity of his father, it is possible that
he might have understood. The Princes of Mervo had never taken readily
to action and enterprise. For generations back, if they had varied at
all, son from father, it had been in the color of hair or eyes, not in
character--a weak, shiftless procession, with nothing to distinguish
them from the common run of men except good looks and a talent for
wasting money.
John was the first of the line who had in him the seeds of better
things. The Westley blood and the bracing nature of his education had
done much to counteract the Mervo strain. He did not know it, but the
American in him was winning. The desire for action was growing steadily
every day.
It had been Mervo that had sent him to the polo grounds on the previous
day. That impulse had been purely Mervian. No prince of that island had
ever resisted a temptation. But it was America that was sending him now
to meet his uncle with a quiet unconcern as to the outcome of the
interview. The spirit of adventure was in him. It was more than
possible that Mr. Westley would sink the uncle in the employer and
dismiss him as summarily as he would have dismissed any other clerk in
similar circumstances. If so, he was prepared to welcome dismissal.
Other men fought an unsheltered fight with the world, so why not he?
He moved towards the door of the inner office with a certain
exhilaration.
As he approached, it flew open, disclosing Mr. Westley himself, a tall,
thin man, at the sight of whom Spiller shot into his seat like a
rabbit.
John went to meet him.
"Ah," said Mr. Westley; "come in here. I want to speak to you."
John followed him into the room.
"Sit down," said his uncle.
John waited while he dictated a letter. Neither spoke till the
stenographer had left the room. John met the girl's eye as she passed.
There was a compassionate look in it. John was popular with his fellow
employes. His absence had been the cause of discussion and speculation
among them, and the general verdict had been that there would be
troublous times for him on the morrow.
When the door closed, Mr. Westley leaned back in his chair, and
regarded his nephew steadily from under a pair of bushy gray eyebrows
which lent a sort of hypnotic keenness to his gaze.
"You were at the ball-game yesterday?" he said.
The unexpectedness of the question startled John into a sharp laugh.
"Yes," he said, recovering himself.
"Without leave."
"It didn't seem worth while asking for leave."
"You mean that you relied so implicitly on our relationship to save you
from the consequences?"
"No, I meant--"
"Well, we need not try and discover what you may have meant. What claim
do you put forward for special consideration? Why should I treat you
differently from any other member of the staff?"
John had a feeling that the interview was being taken at too rapid a
pace. He felt confused.
"I don't want you to treat me differently," he said.
Mr. Westley did not reply. John saw that he had taken a check-book from
its pigeonhole.
"I think we understand each other," said Mr. Westley. "There is no need
for any discussion. I am writing you a check for ten thousand
dollars--"
"Ten thousand dollars!"
"It happens to be your own. It was left to me in trust for you by your
mother. By a miracle your father did not happen to spend it."
John caught the bitter note which the other could not keep out of his
voice, and made one last attempt to probe this mystery. As a boy he had
tried more than once before he realized that this was a forbidden
topic.
"Who was my father?" he said.
Mr. Westley blotted the check carefully.
"Quite the worst blackguard I ever had the misfortune to know," he
replied in an even tone. "Will you kindly give me a receipt for this?
Then I need not detain you. You may return to the ball-game without any
further delay. Possibly," he went on, "you may wonder why you have not
received this money before. I persuaded your mother to let me use my
discretion in choosing the time when it should be handed over to you. I
decided to wait until, in my opinion, you had sense enough to use it
properly. I do not think that time has arrived. I do not think it will
ever arrive. But as we are parting company and shall, I hope, never
meet again, you had better have it now."
John signed the receipt in silence.
"Thank you," said Mr. Westley. "Good-by."
At the door John hesitated. He had looked forward to this moment as one
of excitement and adventure, but now that it had come it had left him
in anything but an uplifted mood. He was naturally warm-hearted, and
his uncle's cold anger hurt him. It was so different from anything
sudden, so essentially not of the moment. He felt instinctively that it
had been smoldering for a long time, and realized with a shock that his
uncle had not been merely indifferent to him all these years, but had
actually hated him. It was as if he had caught a glimpse of something
ugly. He felt that this was the last scene of some long drawn-out
tragedy.
Something made him turn impulsively back towards the desk.
"Uncle--" he cried.
He stopped. The hopelessness of attempting any step towards a better
understanding overwhelmed him. Mr. Westley had begun to write. He must
have seen John's movement, but he continued to write as if he were
alone in the room.
John turned to the door again.
"Good-by," he said.
Mr. Westley did not look up.