My grandfather was transacting some sort of business in Washington, as
my uncle, Jim, had informed me. There he was living in affluence,
married again, in his old age ... just like his former wife.
I had evolved a scheme which seemed to me both clever and feasible, by
which to extract from him a few hundred or a thousand dollars with which
to prosecute my studies further, and enter, eventually, say, Princeton
or Harvard ... perhaps Oxford.
* * * * *
I found my grandfather holding forth in a swell suite of offices in the
business district of Washington.
Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl,
very pretty--he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and
private secretary.
As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking
me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered
haughtily over to see what I was after.
Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as
the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...
that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.
I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office,
where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War
battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp
stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.
Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about,
first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in
a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.
"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.
I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and
appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of
myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying
my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure
of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly,
the while.
I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that
I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college
with....
"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded,
"I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval
buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry
... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."
"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.
"My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and--" as if that were
the last enormity--"very unbusinesslike!"
"But I will then become a great poet! On my word of honour, I will! and
I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!"
He shook his head. He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small
flagpole. As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.
"Come, you haven't eaten yet?"
"No!"
Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.
Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old
Grandfather Gregory took me to a--lunch counter ... bowing to numerous
friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a
hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a
scarecrow in a field.