I
Albert recovered in due season--a little more rapidly, it may be, than
if he had stayed with his father, but not more completely. His education
progressed, entering another phase, and still with the unauthorized
coöperation of his mother. During his stay with her she had really
wrought no great havoc in his wardrobe, whatever she may have
accomplished on a previous occasion. In fact, Albert had reached the
point where he dressed in a manlier fashion--a fashion fortunately
standardized beyond a mother's whims. In his turn, as it had been with
his brothers by marriage, it was now the real preparatory school, with
college looming ahead.
By this time Raymond had completely made his belated adieux to æsthetic
concerns and had begun to concentrate on practical matters--on his own.
They needed his attention, even if he had not the right quality of
attention to give. I had my doubts, and they did not grow less as time
went on. Raymond was now within hail of fifty, and he added to his long
list of earlier mistakes a new mistake peculiar to his years and to his
training--or his lack of it.
Briefly, he assumed that age in itself brought knowledge, and that young
men in their twenties--even their late twenties--were but boys. The
disadvantage of holding this view became apparent when he began to do
business with them. He depended too much on his own vague fund of
experience, and did not realize how dangerous it might be to encounter
keen specialists--however young--in their own field. He was now engaged
in a general recasting of his affairs, and they came to him in
numbers--bright, boyish, young fellows, he called them. He tended to
patronize them, and he began to deal with them rather informally and
much too confidently.
The family bank, after languishing along for a liberal time under its
receiver, had been wound up, and the stockholders, among whom he was a
large one but far from the largest, accepted the results and turned wry
faces to new prospects elsewhere. The family holdings of real-estate, on
the edge of the central district rather than in it, did not share the
general and almost automatic advance in values, and an uncertain,
slow-moving scheme for a general public improvement--one that
continually promised to eventuate yet continually held off--had kept one
of his warehouses vacant for years: its only income was contributed by
an advertising company, which utilized part of its front as a
bulletin-board. Rents in this quarter kept down, though taxes--more
through rising rates than increased valuations--went up. And those two
big old houses! Raymond still lived, too expensively in one, and paid
interest on a cumbering old mortgage. The other--old Jehiel's--was
rented, at no great advantage, to a kind of correspondence school which
conducted dubious courses and was precarious pay.
In such circumstances Raymond began to lend an ear to offers of
"real-estate trades" and to suggestions for reinvestments. But
real-estate, in which almost everybody had once dabbled (with advantage
assumed and usually realized), had now become a game for experts.
Profits for the few: disaster--or at least disillusionment--for the
many. Raymond thought he could "exchange" to advantage, and the bright
young men (who knew what they were about much better than he did)
flocked to help him. Well, one man in a hundred exchanges with profit;
the ninety-and-nine, the further they go the more they lose--onions
peeled coat by coat. Thus Raymond, until I heard of some of his
operations and tried to stop them. One frank-faced, impudent young chap,
who thought he was secure in a contract, I had to frighten off; but
others had preceded him.
Investments were offered him too: schemes in town, and schemes--bolder
and more numerous--out of town. Some of these had the support of McComas
and his "crowd," and turned out advantageously enough, for those on the
"inside"--to continue the jargon of the day and its interests; but
Raymond sensitively, even fastidiously, stepped away from these, and
trusted himself, rather, to financial free lances who often were not
only without principle, but also without definite foothold.
"If you would only consult me!" more than once I had occasion to
remonstrate. "Who are these people? What organization have they
got--what responsibility?"
But though he would dicker with strangers, who took hours of his time
with their specious palaverings, he shrank more and more from his own
tenants and his own agents. One rather important lease had to be renewed
over his head--or behind his back. Still, I do not know that, on this
particular occasion, his interests greatly suffered.
Thus Raymond began to approach a permanent impairment of his affairs at
an age when recuperation for a man of his deficiencies was as good as
out of the question. Further on still he began to suspect--even to
realize--that he was unfitted to cope with adults. In his later fifties
he began to pat children on their heads in parks and to rub the noses
of horses in the streets. With the younger creatures of the human race
and with the gentler orders of the brute creation he felt he could trust
himself, and still escape disaster. If he found little girls sticking
rows of fallen catalpa-blossoms on the spikes of iron fences, he would
stop and praise their powers of design. He became susceptible to tiny
boys in brown sweaters or infinitesimal blue overalls, and he seldom
passed without a touch of sympathy the mild creatures that helped
deliver the laundry-bundles or the milk. Especially if they were white:
he was always sorry, he said, for white coats in a dirty town.
But such matters of advancing age are for the future.
II
As regards the affairs of McComas, I naturally had a lesser knowledge.
They were more numerous and more complicated; nor was I close to them. I
can only say that they went on prosperously, and continued to go on
prosperously: their success justified his concentration on them.
As regards his home and his domestic affairs, I can have more to say. My
wife and I called once or twice at their new house; with a daughter of
twenty-odd, there was no reason why we should not cultivate that
particular suburb, and every reason why we should.
Johnny's two sons were at home, briefly, as seniors who were soon to
graduate. They were tall, hearty lads, with some of their father's high
coloring. One of them was to be injured on the ball-field in his last
term, and to die at home a month later. The other, recovering some of
the individuality which a twin sometimes finds it none too easy to
assert, was to marry before he had been out of college six weeks--marry
young, like his father before him. The girl, young Althea, rather
resembling her mother,--her own mother,--was beginning to think less of
large hair-bows and more of longer dresses. Her father was quite wrapped
up in her and her stepmother seemed to take to her kindly.
Johnny, in conducting us over his house, laid great stress on her room.
On her suite, rather; or even on her wing. She had her own study, her
own bath, her own sleeping porch and sun-parlor. Everything had been
very delicately and richly done. And she had her own runabout in the
garage.
"The boys will go, of course," Johnny said to us, with his arm about his
daughter; "but our little Althea will be a good girl and not leave her
poor old father."
Ah, yes, girls sometimes have a way of lingering at home. Our own Elsie
has always remained faithful to her parents.
Johnny had chosen to call himself "old" and "poor." Of course he looked
neither. True, his chestnut hair was beginning to gray; but it made,
unless clipped closer than he always wore it, at least an intimation of
a florid aureole of crisp vigor; and his whole person gave an exudation
of power and prosperity. No sorrow had come to him beyond the death of
his parents--an inevitable loss which he had duly recorded in public.
That record had yet to receive another name--and yet another.
His wife, who had seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against
him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him--perhaps a more
commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a
life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her
almost a second nature. The order of the day was coöperation, team-work;
in the grand advance she was no straggler, no malingerer. It was a
matter of pride to keep step with him; she was now beyond the fear which
possibly for the first few years had troubled her--the fear that he, by
word, or look, or even by silence, might hint to her that she was not
fully "keeping up." Johnny himself was now rather heavy; for the regimen
which they were pursuing he had the strength that insured against any
loss of flesh through tax on the nerves. His wife, for her part, looked
rather lean--trained, even trained down. As the wife of Raymond, she
would probably have lapsed by now into pinguitude and sloth--unless
discontent and exasperation had prevented.
After showing us the private grandeurs of their own estate, they
motored us to the coördinated splendors of their club. It had been a
good club--one of the best of its kind--from the start, and now it had
grown bigger and better. Its arcaded porches and its verandas were wide;
its links showed the hand of the expert, yet also the sensitive touch of
the landscape gardener; an orchestra of greater size and merit than is
common in such heedless gatherings played for itself if not for the
gossiping, stirring throng; and people talked golf-jargon (for which I
don't care) and polo (of which I know even less). Though the day was one
in the relatively early spring, things were "going"; temporary backsets
would doubtless ensue--meanwhile get the good out of a clear, fair
afternoon, if but a single one.
Through all this gay stir the McComases contrived to make themselves
duly felt. Johnny himself was one of the governors, I gathered; as such
he took part in a small, hurried confab in the smoking-room. Whether or
not there was a point in dispute, I do not know; but when he rose and
led me forth with his curved palm under my elbow the matter had been
settled his way, and no ill-feeling left: rather, as I sensed it, a
feeling of relief that some one had promptly and energetically laid a
moot question for once and all.
His two tall boys I saw walking, with an amiable air of an habituated
understanding, around a billiard-table: "Can you beat them?" asked
Johnny proudly, as we passed the open window. His daughter circulated
confidently, as being almost a member in full and regular standing
herself. She seemed to know intimately any number of girls of her own
age, and even a few lads of seventeen or so--an advantage which our
Elsie, at that stage, never quite enjoyed, and which, due allowance made
for altered conditions, she was somewhat slow in gaining, later.
And about his wife? Well, the slate appeared to have been wiped--if
there really had been any definite marks upon it. Assuredly no smears
were left to show. Those of the younger generation of seven or eight
years before had used the time and arranged their futures, and the
still younger were pressing into their places--witness Johnny's own
brood. Gertrude McComas was now a self-assured though careful
matron--careful, I thought, not to ask too much of general society;
careful not to notice whether or no she received too little; careful,
most of all, not to let it appear that she _was_ careful. Perhaps it was
this care which made up a part of her general strain--and enabled her to
keep the lithe slenderness of her early figure.
We came back to town--the three of us--by train. Both of my Elsies were
thoughtful. Certainly we were playing a less brilliant part than the
family we had just left.
III
Meanwhile Albert pursued his studies. Though he had not so far to come
for a short vacation as the McComas young men, he spent the short
vacations at the school. He was at an awkward age, and Raymond, who
could see him with eyes not unduly clouded by affection, felt him to be
an unpromising cub. He was no adornment for any house, and no
satisfying companion for his father. So he passed the Easter week among
his teachers.
McComas too saw little of Albert. Those months with his mother were
usually worked off at some distant resort, which his stepfather was
often too busy to reach. Only once did he spend any of the allotted time
in McComas's house. This was a fortnight in that grandiose yet tawdry
fabric which had been sacrificed to business, and the occasion was an
illness in the family (not Albert's) which delayed the summer's outing.
McComas had accepted Albert with a large tolerance--at least he was not
annoyed. In fact, the boy's mother, however she may have harassed
Raymond, never (to do her justice) pushed Albert on her second husband.
So, when the juncture arrived,--
"Why, yes," Johnny had said, "have him here, of course; and let him stay
as long as you like. He doesn't bother _me_."
Well, Albert went ahead, doing his Latin, and groping farther into the
dusky penumbra of mathematics. "Why?" he asked; and they explained that
it was the necessary preparation for the university. Albert pondered. He
began to fear that he must continue learning things he didn't want or
need, so that he might go ahead toward learning other things he didn't
want or need. He took a plaintive, discouraged tone in a letter to his
mother; and she--making an exception to her rule--passed along the
protest to McComas. She felt, I suppose, that he would give an answering
note.
Johnny laughed. He himself cared nothing for study; and he was so
happily constituted, as well as so constantly occupied, that he never
had to take refuge in a book.
"Oh, well," he said, broadly, "he'll live through it all, and live it
down. I expect Tom and Joe to. The final gains will be in quite another
direction."
Raymond had heard the same plaint from Albert, and was less pleased. The
boy was clearly to be no student, still less a lover of the arts.
Raymond passed over all thought of old Jehiel, the ruthlessly
acquisitive, and placed the blame on the other grandfather, who was now
in an early dotage after a lifelong harnessing to the stock-ticker.
"_I_ don't know how he's coming out!" was Raymond's impatient remark,
over one of Albert's letters. "Who knows what _any_ boy is going to be?"
Albert accepted his school readily enough as a place of residence. He
did not now need, so much as before, his mother's small cares--in fact,
was glad to be relieved from them; nor was he quite advanced enough to
profit from a cautious father's hints and suggestions. I found myself
hoping that Raymond, at the coming stage of Albert's development, might
have as little trouble as I had had over my own boy (with whose early
career I shall not burden you). Yet, after all, fathers may
apprehensively exchange views and cautiously devise methods of approach
only to find their efforts superfluous: so many boys come through
perfectly well, after all. Simply consider, for example, those in our
old singing-class. The only one to occasion any inconvenience was Johnny
McComas, and he was not a member at all.
The one side of the matter that began to concern Raymond was the money
side. Albert cost at school, and was going to cost more at college. His
father began to economize. For instance, he cut off, this spring, the
contribution which he had been making for years in support of an
organization of reformers that had been working for civic betterment.
These men, considering their small number and their limited resources
had done wonders in raising the tone and quality of the local
administration. The city's reputation, outside, had become respectable.
But a sag had begun to show itself--the relapse that is pretty certain
to follow on an extreme and perhaps overstrained endeavor. The little
band needed money. Raymond was urged to reconsider and to continue--the
upgrade would soon be reached again. Raymond sent, reluctantly, a
smaller amount and asked why the net for contributions was not cast a
little wider. He even suggested a few names.
Whether he mentioned the name of John W. McComas I do not know, but
McComas was given an opportunity to help.
"See what they've sent me," he said to me one day on the street.
He smiled over the urgent, fervid phrases of the appeal. The world, so
far as he was concerned, was going very well. It didn't need
improvement; and if it did, he hadn't the time to improve it.
"They appear to be losing their grip," he added. "They didn't do very
well last election, anyhow."
I sensed his reluctance to be associated with a cause that seemed to be
a losing one.
"Well, I don't know," I said. "I'm giving something myself; and if I can
afford to, you can."
But he developed no interest. He sent a check absurdly disproportionate
to his capacity (he was embarrassed, I am glad to say, when he mentioned
later the amount); and I incline to think that even this bit was done
almost out of a personal regard for me.
Raymond cut a part of his own contribution out of Albert's allowance,
and there was better reason than ever why Albert should not take a long
trip for only four or five days at home.
IV
It is tiresome, I know, to read about municipal reform; most of us want
the results and not the process--and some of us not even the results.
And it is no less tiresome to read about investments, unless we are
dealing with some young knight of finance who strives successfully for
his lady's favor and who, successful, lives with her ever after in the
style to which her father has accustomed her. But in the case of a
maladroit man of fifty....
I had asked Raymond to call on me with any new scheme that was taking
his attention, and one forenoon he walked in.
He had an envelope of loose papers. He laid some of them on my desk and
thumbed a few others with an undecided expression.
"What do you think of this?" he asked. "I've got to have more money, and
here's something that may bring it in."
It was a speculative industrial affair in Upper Michigan. I saw some
familiar names attached--among them that of John W. McComas, though not
prominently.
"I'll find out for you," I said.
"I don't want you to find out from him."
"I'll find out."
Raymond fingered his envelope fussily: there was nothing left in it.
"It's all costing me too much. Extras at that school. That big
house--too big, too expensive. I can't lug it along any farther. Find me
some one to buy it."
"I'll see," I said.
I told him about our visit to the club, two or three months before. I
implied, in as delicate and circumambulatory a way as possible, that his
one-time wife, according to my own observations, taken under peculiarly
favorable, because exacting, conditions, was completely accepted.
"Oh yes," he replied, as if the matter had been settled years ago, and
as if he had long had that sense of it. Yes, he seemed to be saying, the
marriage had made it all right for her, and had soon begun to make it
better for him. Possibly not a "deceived" husband; and no longer so
rawly flagrant a failure as a human companion.
"Their house is good, I gather," he went on. "There were some plates of
it in the architectural journals. Just how good he doesn't know, I
suppose--and never will."
"I found him fairly appreciative of it."
"Possibly--as a financial achievement brought about by his own money."
"He's learning some of its good points," I declared.
"There was some talk of having Albert there, just before they went off
to the Yellowstone." He frowned. "Well, this can't go on so many more
years, now."
I did not quite get Raymond's attitude. He did not want the boy with him
at home. He did not want to meet any extra expenses--and Mrs. McComas
was assuredly paying Albert's way through mid-summer, as well as
eternally buying him clothes. I think that what Raymond wanted--and
wanted but rather weakly--was his own will, whether there was any
advantage in it or not, and wanted that will without payments, charges,
costs.
I disliked his grudging way, or rather, his balking way, as regarded a
recognition of the liberality of his former wife's husband--for that was
what it came to.
I returned his prospectus. "I'll look this up. How about that company in
Montana?" I continued.
"They've passed a dividend. I was counting on something from that
quarter."
"And how about the factory in Iowa?"
"That will bring me something next year."
"Well," I said, doubling back to the matter that had brought him in,
"I'll inquire about this and let you know."
In the course of a few days I called on McComas. Others were calling.
Others were always calling. If I wanted to see him I should have to
wait. I had expected to wait. I waited.
When I was finally admitted, he rose and came halfway through his
splendors of upholstery to give me an Olympian greeting.
"It's brass tacks," I said. "Three minutes will do."
"Four, if you like."
"Three. Frankly, very frankly, is this a thing"--here I used the large
page of ornamental letter-press as word-saver--"is this a thing for an
ordinary investor?"
"Ordinary investor"--that is what I called Raymond. Perhaps I flattered
him unduly.
"Why," responded McComas, with a grimace, "it's a right enough thing for
the right man--or men. Several of us expect to do pretty well out of
it."
"'Several'? How about the rank outsider?"
"Anybody that _you_ know sniffing?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
"Well--Prince."
"H'm." Johnny pondered; became magnanimous. "Well, it ain't for him.
Pull his nose away. I don't want his money."
He knew what he had taken. He may have had a prescience of what he was
yet to take. He could afford an interim of generosity.
V
A year or so went on, and we met the McComases at a horse-show. Once
more it had become distinguished to have horses, and to exhibit them--in
the right place. Althea was with her parents; so was the survivor of the
stalwart twins.
Johnny had taken the blow hard. That a son of his, one so strong and
robust, a youth on whom so much time and thought and care and money had
been lavished to fit him for the world, should go down and go out (and
in such a sudden, trivial fashion)--oh, it was more than he felt he
could endure. But he was built on a broad plan; his nature, when the
test came, opened a wide door to the assimilation of experiences and
offered a wide margin for adjustment to their jars. His other son, the
full equal of the lost one, still survived and was present to-day; and
Johnny, grandly reconciled, was himself again.
Althea had taken the interval to make sure about her hair-ribbon and her
skirts. The ribbons had been pronounced outgrown and superfluous, and
had been banished. The suitability of longer skirts had been felt, and
had been acted upon. Althea was now almost a young lady, and a very
pretty one.
I say it without bitterness. The beauties of nature--those trifles that
make the great differences--are indeed unequally distributed among human
creatures. Not all girls are pretty; not all attractive; not all
equipped to make their way. No.
You will assume for yourselves the greenery of grass and trees, the slow
cumuli in the afternoon sky, the lively, brightly dressed throngs on
lawns and verandas, and the horses; yes, even those were present,
somewhere or other.
Gertrude McComas was of the crowd; suitably dressed (or, perhaps,
attired), a little less spare than once, and somehow conveying the
impression, if unobtrusively, that her presence was necessary for the
completeness of the function. She was pleasant with Althea, who had a
horse on her mind and a number on her back.
Gertrude had returned from the North with Althea and Albert, a week
before Albert's allotted time with her was up, so that they might all be
a part of this occasion. Albert was now taller than his father, had
begun to gather up a little assertiveness on reaching the end of his
preparatory days, had taken his examinations, and was understood to be
within a month or so of college.
I cannot say that Althea's skirts, however much thought she had given
them, were long to-day. The only skirts she wore were the skirts of her
riding-coat. The rest of her was boots and trousers; and she carried a
little quirt with which she flecked the dust from her nethers, now and
again, rather smartly.
Albert looked--obviously envious, and obviously perturbed. His various
knockings from pillar to post had left him without horse and without
horsemanship. And here was a young feminine (almost a relative, in a
sense; well, was she, or was she not?) who was dressed as he (with some
slight differences) might have been dressed, and who was doing (or was
about to do) some of the things that he himself (as he was now keenly
conscious) had always hankered to do.... How was he to take it all?--the
difference, the likeness, the closeness, the distance....
And we--my wife and I--became suddenly, poignantly, even bitterly aware
that our Elsie, beside us in her tailor-made, had never been on a horse
in her life--and was now perhaps too old to make a good beginning.
After a little while Althea was carried away for her "entry" or "event,"
or whatever they properly call it--for I am no sportsman. Some small
section of the crowd interested itself about the same time--at least got
between us and the proceedings. We saw little or nothing--just heads,
hats and parasols. All I know is that, in a few moments, Althea
reappeared--I think she had leaped something. Her father was by her
side, vastly proud and happy. Her mother (as I shall say for short)
arrived from somewhere, with a gratified smile. Her big brother
presently drew up alongside on a polo-pony, and gave her a big,
flat-handed pat in the middle of her placard, and a handsome young
woman, who was pointed out to us as the wife he had married in February,
during our fortnight at Miami, reached up to her bridle-hand and gave it
a squeeze. And there was a deep fringe of miscellaneous friends,
acquaintances and rivals.
"What do you think of our daughter, now!" asked Johnny, loudly and
generally, as he lifted Althea down. He looked about as if to sweep
together the widest assemblage of praises and applause. Many flocked;
many congratulated; but still further tribute must be levied. McComas
caught sight of Albert. The young fellow stood on the edge of the thing,
staring, embarrassed, shaken to his centre.
"Here, you, Albert!" Johnny cried; "come over and shake hands with the
winner!"
And meanwhile, Raymond, off by himself somewhere or other, I suppose,
may have been studying how in the world he was ever going to put Albert
through Yale.
VI
Business once more!
It ought to be barred. I get enough of it in my daily routine without
having it intrude here. Business should do no more than provide the
platform and the scenic background for the display of young love, hope
and beauty. But here we have to deal with the affairs of a worried and
incompetent man half way through his fifties.
Raymond came in one morning, on my summons. His manner was depressed; it
was becoming habitually so. I tried to cheer him with indifferent
topics,--among them the horse-show, which I saw so unsatisfactorily and
which I have described so inadequately. He had already heard about it
from Albert, and he felt no relish for the friendliness Johnny McComas
had displayed on that occasion.
"Trying to get _him_, too?" was Raymond's comment.
"Oh, I wouldn't quite say _that_...."
"I have a letter from his mother. She wants to know about college."
"Well, how _are_ things?"
"Oh, I don't know; poor."
"That Iowa company?"
"Next year."
"Again?"
"Yes--next year; as usual."
"Well, I have news for you."
"Good?" he asked, picking up a little.
"That depends on how you look at it. I have a buyer for your house."
"Thank God!"
"Don't hurry to thank God. Perhaps you will want to thank the Devil."
Raymond's face fell. "You don't mean that _he_--on top of everything
else--has come forward to--?"
"My friend! my friend! It isn't that at all. 'He' has nothing to do with
it. Quite another party."
And it was. A Mr. Gluckstein, a sort of impresario made suddenly rich by
a few seasons with fiddlers and prima donnas, was the man. He was
willing, he said,--and I paid the news out as evenly and considerately
as I could,--he was willing to take the house and assume the
mortgage--but he asked a bonus of five thousand dollars for doing it.
"The scoundrel!" groaned Raymond, his face twisted by contemptuous rage.
"The impudent scoundrel!"
"Possibly so. But that is his offer--and the only one. And it is his
best."
Raymond sat with his eyes on the floor. He was afraid to let me see his
face. He hated the house--it was an incubus, a millstone; but--
He visibly despaired. "What shall I do about Albert's college, now?" he
muttered presently.
He seemed to have passed at a bound beyond the stage of sale and
transfer. The odious property was off his hands--and every hope of a
spare dollar had gone with it.
"His mother writes--" began Raymond.
"Yes?"
"She tells me--Well, her father died last month, it seems, and she is
expecting something out of his estate...."
"Estate? Is there one?"
"Who can say? A man in that business! There might be something; there
might be nothing or less. And it might take a year or more to get it."
"And if there is anything?"
"She says she will look after Albert's first year or two. I was about to
refuse, but I expect I shall have to listen now."
He was silent. Then he broke out:--
"But there won't be. That old woman with her water-waves and her
wrinkles is still hanging on; even if there should be anything, she
would be the one to get most of it. I know her--she would snatch it
all!"
"Listen, Raymond," I said; "you had better let _me_ help you here."
"I don't want you to. There must be some way to manage."
He fell into thought.
"I doubt if she can do anything, herself. Whatever she did would come
through him in the end. You say he likes Albert?" He was silent again.
"I don't want to meet either of them--but I would about as soon meet him
as her."
I saw that he was nerving himself for another _scène à faire_. Well, it
would be less trying than the first one. If his sense of form, his
_flair_ for fatalism, still persisted, ease was out of the question and
no surrogate could serve.
Perhaps, after all, there had been nothing between those two. Anyway, in
the general eye the marriage had made everything right. She was
accepted, certainly. And as certainly he had lived down, if he had ever
possessed it, the reputation of a hapless husband.
He wrote to her in a non-committal way--a letter which left loopholes,
room for accommodation. Her reply suggested that he call at the bank;
she would pass on the word. He told me he would try to do so. I saw the
impudent concert-monger was to have his house.
And so, one forenoon, at eleven or so, Raymond, after some
self-drivings, reached the bank; by appointment, as he understood.
Through the big doors; up the wide, balustraded stairway--it was the
first time he had ever been in the place. He was well on the way to the
broad, square landing, when some lively clerks or messengers, who had
been springing along behind him, all at once slackened their pace and
began to skirt the paneled marble walls. A number of prosperous
middle-aged and elderly men were coming down together in a compact
group. It seemed as if some directors' meeting was in progress--in
progress from one office, or one building, to another. In the middle of
the group was John W. McComas.
He was absorbed, abstracted. Raymond, like some of the other up-farers,
had gained the landing, and like them now stood a little to one side.
McComas looked out at him with no particular expression and indeed with
no markedness of attention.
"How do you do?" he said indifferently.
"I'm pretty well," said Raymond dispiritedly.
"And that was all!" he reported next day in a high state of indignation.
"Don't suppose I shall try it again!"
But a careless Gertrude had failed to inform her husband of the
appointment. She had been busy, or he had been away from home....
"Go once more," I counseled, I pleaded.
A note came to him from McComas--a decent, a civil. Come and talk things
over--that was its purport. He went.
McComas, as you can guess, was very bland, very expansive, very
magnanimous (to his own sense). "I _like_ Albert!" he declared heartily.
But he did little to cloak the fact that it was his own money which was
to carry the boy through college.
Raymond was in the depths for a month. After Gluckstein had got his deed
for the house and Albert had packed his trunk for the East, he felt that
now indeed he had lost wife, home and son.