JACK BALCOMB’S PLEASANT WAYS
There comes a time in the life of young men when their college
fraternity pins lie forgotten in the collar-button box and the spiking
of freshmen ceases to be a burning issue. Tippecanoe was one of the
few freshwater colleges that barred women; but this was not its only
distinction, for its teaching was sound, its campus charming and the
town of which it was the chief ornament a quiet place noted from the
beginning of things for its cultivated people.
It is no longer so very laudable for a young man to pay his way through
college; and Morris Leighton had done this easily and without caring
to be praised or martyrized for doing so. He had enjoyed his college
days; he had been popular with town and gown; and he had managed to get
his share of undergraduate fun while leading his classes. He had helped
in the college library; he had twisted the iron letter-press on the
president’s correspondence late into the night; he had copied briefs
for a lawyer after hours; but he had pitched for the nine and hustled
for his “frat,” and he had led class rushes with ardor and success.
He had now been for several years in the offices of Knight, Kittredge
and Carr at Mariona, only an hour’s ride from Tippecanoe; and he still
kept in touch with the college. Michael Carr fully appreciated a
young man who took the law seriously and who could sit down in a court
room on call mornings, when need be, and turn off a demurrer without
paraphrasing it from a text-book.
Mrs. Carr, too, found Morris Leighton useful, and she liked him,
because he always responded unquestioningly to any summons to fill up a
blank at her table; and if Mr. Carr was reluctant at the last minute to
attend a lecture on “Egyptian Burial Customs,” Mrs. Carr could usually
summon Morris Leighton by telephone in time to act as her escort.
Young men were at a premium in Mariona, as in most other places, and
it was something to have one of the species, of an accommodating turn,
and very presentable, within telephone range. Mrs. Carr was grateful,
and so, it must be said, was her husband, who did not care to spend
his evenings digging up Egyptians that had been a long time dead, or
listening to comic operas. It was through Mrs. Carr that Leighton came
to be well known in Mariona; she told her friends to ask him to call,
and there were now many homes besides hers that he visited.
It sometimes occurred to Morris Leighton that he was not getting ahead
in the world very fast. He knew that his salary from Carr was more than
any other young lawyer of his years earned by independent practice; but
it seemed to him that he ought to be doing better. He had not drawn
on his mother’s small resources since his first year at college; he
had made his own way--and a little more--but he experienced moments of
restlessness in which the difficulties of establishing himself in his
profession loomed large and formidable.
An errand to a law firm in one of the fashionable new buildings that
had lately raised the Mariona skyline led him one afternoon past the
office of his college classmate, Jack Balcomb. “J. Arthur Balcomb”
was the inscription on the door, “Suite B, Room 1.” Leighton had seen
little of Balcomb for a year or more, and his friend’s name on the
ground-glass door arrested his eye.
Two girls were busily employed at typewriters in the anteroom, and one
of them extended a blank card to Morris and asked him for his name. The
girl disappeared into the inner room and came back instantly followed
by Balcomb, who seized Morris’s hand, dragged him in and closed the
door.
“Well, old man!” Balcomb shouted. “I’m glad to see you. It’s downright
pleasant to have a fellow come in occasionally and feel no temptation
to take his watch. Sink into yonder soft-yielding leather and allow me
to offer you one of these plutocratic perfectos. Only the elect get
these, I can tell you. In that drawer there I keep a brand made out of
car waste and hemp rope, that does very well for ordinary commercial
sociability. Got a match? All right; smoke up and tell me what you’re
doing to make the world a better place to live in, as old Prexy used to
say at college.”
“I’m digging at the law, at the same old stand. I can’t say that I’m
flourishing like Jonah’s gourd, as you seem to be.”
Morris cast his eyes over the room, which was handsomely furnished.
There was a good rug on the floor and the desk and table were of heavy
oak; an engraving of Thomas Jefferson hung over Balcomb’s desk, and
on the opposite side of the room was a table covered with financial
reference books.
“Well, I tell you, old man,” declared Balcomb, “you’ve got to fool
all the people all the time these days to make it go. Those venerable
whiskers around town whine about the good old times and how a young
man’s got to go slow but sure. There’s nothing in it; and they wouldn’t
be in it either, if they had to start in again; no siree!”
“What is your game just now, Jack, if it isn’t impertinent? It’s hard
to keep track of you. I remember very well that you started in to learn
the wholesale drug business.”
“Oh tush! don’t refer to that, an thou lovest me! That is one of the
darkest pages of my life. Those people down there in South High Street
thought I was a jay, and they sent me out to help the shipping clerk.
Wouldn’t that jar you! Overalls,--and a hand truck. Wow! I couldn’t get
out of that fast enough. Then, you know, I went to Chicago and spent a
year in a broker’s office, and I guess I learned a few up there. Oh,
rather! They sent me into the country to sell mining stock and I made
a record. They kept the printing presses going overtime to keep me
supplied. Say, they got afraid of me; I was too good!”
He stroked his vandyke beard complacently, and flicked the ash from his
cigar.
“What’s your line now? Real estate, mortgages, lending money to the
poor? How do you classify yourself?”
“You do me a cruel wrong, Morris, a cruel wrong. You read my sign on
the outer wall? Well, that’s a bluff. There’s nothing in real estate,
_per se_, as old Doc Bridges used to say at college. And the loan
business has all gone to the bad,--people are too rich; farmers are
rolling in real money and have it to lend. There was nothing for little
Willie in petty brokerages. I’m scheming--promoting--and I take my
slice off of everything that passes.”
“That certainly sounds well. You’ve learned fast. You had an ambition
to be a poet when you were in college. I think I still have a few
pounds of your verses in my traps somewhere.”
Balcomb threw up his head and laughed in self-pity.
“I believe I _was_ bitten with the literary tarantula for a while, but
I’ve lived it down, I hope. Prexy used to predict a bright literary
future for me in those days. You remember, when I made Phi Beta Kappa,
how he took both my hands and wept over me. ‘Balcomb,’ he says, ‘you’re
an honor to the college.’ I suppose he’d weep again, if he knew I’d
only forgotten about half the letters of the Greek alphabet,--left
them, as one might say, several thousand parasangs to the rear in my
mad race for daily sustenance. Well, I may not leave any vestiges on
the sands of time, but, please God, I shan’t die hungry,--not if I keep
my health. Dear old Prexy! He was a nice old chump, though a trifle
somnolent in his chapel talks.”
“Well, we needn’t pull the planks out of the bridge we’ve crossed on. I
got a lot out of college that I’m grateful for. They did their best for
us,” said Morris.
“Oh, yes; it was well enough, but if I had it to do over, Tippecanoe
wouldn’t see me; not much! It isn’t what you learn in college, it’s the
friendships you make and all that sort of thing that counts. A western
man ought to go east to college and rub up against eastern fellows.
The atmosphere at the freshwater colleges is pretty jay. Fred Waters
left Tippecanoe and went to Yale and got in with a lot of influential
fellows down there,--chaps whose fathers are in big things in New York.
Fred has a fine position now, just through his college pull, and first
thing you know, he’ll pick up an heiress and be fixed for life. Fred’s
a winner all right.”
“He’s also an ass,” said Leighton. “I remember him of old.”
“An ass of the large gray and long-eared species,--I’ll grant you that,
all right enough; but look here, old man, you’ve got to overlook the
fact that a fellow occasionally lifts his voice and brays. Man does not
live by the spirit alone; he needs bread, and bread’s getting hard to
get.”
“I’ve noticed it,” replied Leighton, who had covered all this ground
before in talks with Balcomb and did not care to go into it further.
“And then, you remember,” Balcomb went on, in enjoyment of his own
reminiscences, “I wooed the law for a while. But I guess what I learned
wouldn’t have embarrassed Chancellor Kent. I really had a client once.
I didn’t see a chance of getting one any other way, so I hired him. He
was a coon. I employed him for two dollars to go to the Grand Opera
House and buy a seat in the orchestra when Sir Henry Irving was giving
_The Merchant of Venice_. He went to sleep and snored and they threw
him out with rude, insolent, and angry hands after the second act; and
I brought suit against the management for damages, basing my claim
on the idea that they had spurned my dusky brother on account of his
race, color and previous condition of servitude. The last clause was
a joke. He had never done any work in his life, except for the state.
He was a very sightly coon, too, now that I recall him. The show was,
as I said, _The Merchant of Venice_, and I’ll leave it to anybody if
my client wasn’t at least as pleasing to the eye as Sir Henry in his
Shylock togs. I suppose if it had been _Othello_, race feeling would
have run so high that Sir Henry would hardly have escaped lynching.
Well, to return. My client got loaded on gin about the time the case
came up on demurrer and gave the snap away, and I dropped out of the
practice to avoid being disbarred. And it was just as well. My landlord
had protested against my using the office at night for poker purposes,
so I passed up the law and sought the asphodel fields of promotion.
_Les affaires font l’homme_, as old Professor Garneau used to say at
college. So here I am; and I’m glad I shook the law. I’d got tired of
eating coffee and rolls at the Berlin bakery three times a day.
“Why, Morris, old man,” he went on volubly, “there were days when
the loneliness in my office grew positively oppressive. You may
remember that room I had in the old Adams and Harper Block? It gave
upon a courtyard where the rats from a livery stable came to disport
themselves on rainy days. I grew to be a dead shot with the flobert
rifle; but lawsy, there’s mighty little consideration for true merit
in this world! Just because I winged a couple of cheap hack horses one
day, when my nerves weren’t steady, the livery people made me stop,
and one of my fellow tenants in the old rookery threatened to have me
arrested for conducting a shooting gallery without a license. He was a
dentist, and he said the snap of the rifle worried his victims.”
The two typewriting machines outside clicked steadily. Some one knocked
at the door.
“Come in!” shouted Balcomb.
One of the typewriter operators entered with a brisk air of business
and handed a telegram to Balcomb, who tore it open nonchalantly. As
he read it, he tossed the crumpled envelope over his shoulder in an
absent-minded way.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, slapping his leg as though the news were
important. Then, to the girl, who waited with note-book and pencil in
hand: “Never mind; don’t wait. I’ll dictate the answer later.”
“How did it work?” he asked, turning to Leighton, who had been looking
over the books on the table.
“How did what work?”
“The fake. It was a fake telegram. That girl’s trained to bring in a
message every time I have a caller. If the caller stays thirty minutes,
it’s two messages,--in other words I’m on a fifteen-minute schedule.
I tip a boy in the telegraph office to keep me supplied with blanks.
It’s a great scheme. There’s nothing like a telegram to create the
impression that your office is a seething caldron of business. Old
Prexy was in town the other day. I don’t suppose he ever got a dose of
electricity in his life unless he had been sorely bereft of a member of
his family and was summoned to the funeral baked meats. Say, he must
have thought I had a private wire!”
Leighton sat down and fanned himself with his hat.
“You’ll be my death yet. You have the cheek of a nice, fresh, new
baggage check, Balcomb.”
“Your cigar isn’t burning well, Morris. Won’t you try another? No? I
like my guests to be comfortable.”
“I’m comfortable enough. I’m even entertained. Go ahead and let me see
the rest of the show.”
“Oh, we haven’t exactly a course of stunts here. Those are nice
girls out there. I’ve broken them of the chewing gum habit, and
they can answer anxious inquiries at the door now without danger of
strangulation.”
“They seem speedy on the machine. Your correspondence must be something
vast!”
“Um, yes. It has to be. Every cheap skate of a real estate man keeps
one stenographer. My distinction is that I keep two. They’re easy
advertising. Now that little one in the pink shirt-waist that brought
in the message from Mars a moment ago is a wonder of intelligence. Do
you know what she’s doing now?”
“Trying to break the machine I should guess, from the racket.”
“Bah! It’s the Lord’s Prayer.”
“You mean it’s a sort of prayer machine.”
“Not on your life. Maude hasn’t any real work to do just now and she’s
running off the Lord’s Prayer. I know by the way it clicks. When she
strikes ‘our daily bread’ the machine always gives a little gasp. See?
The rule of the office is that they must have some diddings doing
all the time. The big one with red hair is a perfect marvel at the
Declaration of Independence. She’ll be through addressing circulars in
a little while and will run off into ‘All men are created equal’--a
blooming lie, by the way--without losing a stroke.”
“You _have_ passed the poetry stage, beyond a doubt. But I should think
the strain of keeping all this going would be wearing on your sensitive
poetical nature. And it must cost something.”
“Oh, yes!” Balcomb pursed his lips and stroked his fine soft beard.
“But it’s worth it. I’m not playing for small stakes. I’m looking for
Christmas trees. Now they’ve got their eyes on me. These old Elijahs
that have been the bone and sinew of the town for so long that they
think they own it, are about done for. You can’t sit in a bank here any
more and look solemn and turn people down because your corn hurts or
because the chinch bugs have got into the wheat in Dakota or the czar
has bought the heir apparent a new toy pistol. You’ve got to present a
smiling countenance to the world and give the glad hand to everybody
you’re likely to need in your business. I jolly everybody!”
“That comes easy for you; but I didn’t know you could make an asset of
it.”
“It’s part of my working capital. Now you’d better cut loose from old
man Carr and move up here and get a suite near me. I’ve got more than I
can do,--I’m always needing a lawyer,--organizing companies, legality
of bonds, and so on. Dignified work. Lots of out-of-town people come
here and I’ll put you in touch with them. I threw a good thing to Van
Cleve only the other day. Bond foreclosure suit for some fellows in the
East that I sell stuff to. They wrote and asked me the name of a good
man. I thought of you--old college days and all that--but Van Cleve
had just done me a good turn and I had to let him have it. But you’d
better come over. You’ll never know the world’s in motion in that musty
old hole of Carr’s. You get timid and afraid to go near the water by
staying on shore so long. But say, Morris, you seem to be getting along
pretty well in the social push. Your name looks well in the society
column. How do you work it, anyhow?”
“Don’t expect me to give the snap away. The secret’s valuable. And I’m
not really inside; I am only peering through the pickets!”
“Tush! Get thee hence! I saw you in a box at the theater the other
night,--evidently Mrs. Carr’s party. There’s nothing like mixing
business with pleasure. Ah me!”
He yawned and stroked his beard and laughed, with a fine showing of
white teeth.
“I don’t see what’s pricking you with small pins of envy. You were
there with about the gayest crowd I ever saw at a theater; and it
looked like your own party.”
“Don’t say a word,” implored Balcomb, putting out his hand. “Members
of the board of managers of the state penitentiary, their wives, their
cousins and their aunts. Say, weren’t those beauteous whiskers! My eye!
Well, the evening netted me about five hundred plunks, and I got to
see the show and to eat a good supper in the bargain. Some reformers
were to appear before them that night officially, and my friends wanted
to keep them busy. I was called into the game to do something,--hence
these tears. Lawsy! I earned my money. Did you see those women?--about
two million per cent. pure jay!”
“You ought to cut out that sort of thing; it isn’t nice.”
“Oh, you needn’t be so virtuous. Carr keeps a whole corps of rascals to
spread apple-butter on the legislature corn-bread.”
“You’d better speak to him about it. He’d probably tell Mrs. Carr to
ask you to dinner right away.”
“Oh, that will come in time. I don’t expect to do everything at once.
You may see me up there sometime; and when you do, don’t shy off like
a colt at the choo-choos. By the way, I’d like to be one of the bright
particular stars of the Dramatic Club if you can fix it. You remember
that amateur theatricals are rather in my line.”
“I do. At college you were one of the most persistent Thespians we had,
and one of the worst. But let social matters go. You haven’t told me
how to get rich quick yet. I haven’t had the nerve to chuck the law as
you have.”
“Well,” continued Balcomb, expansively, “a fellow has got to take what
he can when he can. One swallow doesn’t make a summer; one sucker
doesn’t make a spring; so we must catch the birdling _en route_ or
_en passant_, as our dear professor of modern languages used to try
to get us to remark. Say, between us old college friends, I cleared
up a couple of thousand last week just too easy for any use. You know
Singerly, the popular undertaker,--Egyptian secret of embalming,
lady and gentleman attendants, night and day,--always wears a spray
of immortelles in his lapel and a dash of tuberose essence on his
handkerchief. Well, Singerly and I operated together in the smoothest
way you ever saw. Excuse me!” He lay back and howled. “Well, there was
an old house up here on High Street just where it begins to get good;
very exclusive--old families and all that. It belonged to an estate,
and I got an option on it just for fun. I began taking Singerly up
there to look at it. We’d measure it, and step it off, and stop and
palaver on the sidewalk. In a day or two those people up there began
to take notice and to do me the honor to call on me. You see, my boy,
an undertaking shop--even a fashionable one--for a neighbor, isn’t
pleasant; it wouldn’t add, as one might say, to the _sauce piquante_ of
life; and as a reminder of our mortality--a trifle depressing, as you
will admit.”
He took the cigar from his mouth and examined the burning end of it
thoughtfully.
“I sold the option to one of Singerly’s prospective neighbors for the
matter of eleven hundred. He’s a retired wholesale grocer and didn’t
need the money.”
“Seems to me you’re cutting pretty near the deadline, Jack. That’s not
a pretty sort of hold-up. You might as well take a sandbag and lie in
wait by night.”
“Great rhubarb! You make me tired. I’m not robbing the widow and the
orphan, but a fat old Dutchman who doesn’t ask anything of life but his
sauerkraut and beer.”
“And you do! You’d better give your ethical sense a good tonic before
you butt into the penal code.”
“Come off! I’ve got a better scheme even than the Singerly deal. The
school board’s trying to locate a few schools in up-town districts.
Very undesirable neighbors. I rather think I can make a couple of turns
there. This is all strictly _inter nos_, as Professor Morton used to
say in giving me, as a special mark of esteem, a couple of hundred
extra lines of Virgil to keep me in o’ nights.”
He looked at his watch and gave the stem-key a few turns before
returning it to his pocket.
“You’ll have to excuse me, old man. I’ve got a date with Adams, over
at the Central States Trust Company. He’s a right decent chap when you
know how to handle him. I want to get them to finance a big apartment
house scheme. I’ve got an idea for a flat that will make the town sit
up and gasp.”
“Don’t linger on my account, Jack. I only stopped in to see whether you
kept your good spirits. I feel as though I’d had a shower bath. Come
along.”
Several men were waiting to see Balcomb in the outer office and he
shook hands with all of them and begged them to come again, taking care
to mention that he had been called to the Central States Trust Company
and had to hurry away.
He called peremptorily to the passing elevator-car to wait, and as he
and Leighton squeezed into it, he continued his half of an imaginary
conversation in a tone that was audible to every passenger.
“I could have had those bonds, if I had wanted them; but I knew
there was a cloud on them--the county was already over its legal
limit. I guess those St. Louis fellows will be sorry they were so
enterprising--here we are!”
And then in a lower tone to Leighton: “That was for old man Dameron’s
benefit. Did you see him jammed back in the corner of the car? Queer
old party and as tight as a drum. When I can work off some assessable
and non-interest bearing bonds on him, it’ll be easy to sell Uncle
Sam’s Treasury a gold brick. They say the old man has a daughter who is
finer than gold; yea, than much fine gold. I’m going to look her up, if
I ever get time. You’d better come over soon and pick out an office.
_Verbum sat sapienti_, as our loving teacher used to say. So long!”
Leighton walked back to his office in good humor and better contented
with his own lot.