IN SEMINARY SQUARE
At midnight Leighton sat in the old house in Seminary Square debating
the situation with Rodney Merriam.
“What we said to her here this afternoon evidently failed to arouse
her. She either doesn’t understand, or she doesn’t care.”
“She understands perfectly,” said Merriam; “but it’s quite like her to
wish to shield him. Her mother did it before her. It’s a shame for the
money to have gone so; but it was inevitable, and I’m glad it’s over
now.”
“If it _is_ over--something might be saved for her.”
“We’ll let it all go. She’d better be a beggar than have her father
published as a felon. Whatever I have shall be hers; and there’s my
sister, with no one else to care for. The dread of her father’s doing
something to disgrace her and all of us has hung over me all the year;
I’m glad we’ve reached a crisis. She is like her mother; yes; she is
like Margaret. Ah, Morris! it seems to me that I have seen nothing but
failure in this world.”
Morris was silent. Rodney Merriam was growing old and the thought of it
touched him deeply, for Rodney Merriam was his best friend, a comrade,
an elder brother, who stood to him for manliness and courage, much as
Carr represented in his eyes scholarship and professional attainment.
“You never saw Zelda’s mother?” asked Merriam, presently.
“No.”
“You never knew anything of her life?”
“No,” said Leighton. The old man’s head was bent and he did not look at
Leighton; but the young man saw that he was moved by some memory.
“Your father and my sister were once engaged to be married,” said
Merriam, still not looking up. He was silent for an interval.
“I never knew,” said Leighton. “I never had the slightest idea of it.”
“I knew you did not know; and Zee does not know, and she mustn’t know.
It’s too bad, Morris, that we can’t order our lives as they should be.
Mine is a failure. I am sixty years old; and I am not only a failure,
but the people I have tried to help I have injured.” He spoke bitterly.
“No, no; you must not talk so. If you have done half as much for any
one else as for me,--”
“I have done nothing for you,--or for Zee, and I have tried to help
her. I have wanted--I have wanted very much for you to care for each
other. It’s like an echo of an old story. All that I ask now is that
you will bear me no ill will when I have gone. I have done the best I
could.”
“Please don’t! There’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay in the world
for many years to come.”
“We don’t say ‘many years’ when we have passed sixty. Your father was
my intimate friend, Morris. We were boys together at college,--it’s
your college and mine, too. I’m glad you went there. Your father would
have liked it so. Some of the fellows who taught us, taught you. When
you saw them you saw gentlemen and scholars. They gave up the chance
of greater things to stay there among the elms and maples of the old
campus. God never made finer gentlemen!
“Your father and I were seniors at Tippecanoe when the Civil War came.
Your father rose from the ranks to be a colonel. My own affairs didn’t
prosper; but that’s all over now,”--and the old man sighed. “After the
war it didn’t seem worth while to go back to school, but your father
finished, and stayed there in Tippecanoe where he was born, and studied
law. I tried the law here, but it wouldn’t go; the war had spoiled
me--I failed there, as everywhere. My father died and left me enough
to live on, and a little more; so I’ve never done a single thing to my
credit from beginning to end.”
He was speaking brokenly, in a way that was new to him. He felt
helplessly about on the table for the safety match-holder, and Leighton
sprang up and handed him a light,--something that he had never before
felt that he dare do. No one ever held Rodney Merriam’s coat for him,
any more than one patted him on the back.
“At the end of our war, the Maximilian affair was on in Mexico and I
wanted to have a hand in it. When I came back your father had moved
here. He was an ambitious man. There was every likelihood of his taking
a high place at the bar; and he had, too, a taste for politics. He
could hardly have failed to receive substantial rewards, for everything
went to the soldiers in those days. Then he met my sister. She was the
youngest member of our family,--only a girl at the end of the war. She
was a very beautiful woman, Morris. She and Zee are much alike; but
Zee has marked traits of her own. I don’t quite account for them. Her
mother was a quick-witted woman, well educated for her day. Zee is more
a woman of the world than her mother was and she has more spirit.”
Merriam opened a drawer in his table and drew out a miniature painted
on porcelain. He put on his spectacles and studied it intently for a
moment before handing it to Leighton.
“The old-fashioned way of wearing the hair makes a difference; but to
all intents and purposes this is Zee. As Margaret was our youngest, we
had a little different feeling about her. I had--I was the oldest--and
the rest of them had. She had known no trouble; she was light of
heart,--the brightest and cheeriest girl in town; and there seemed no
reason why she should not marry happily and never know care or trouble.
It was understood in the family that they were to be married, though
there was never any formal announcement. Your father meanwhile was
establishing himself. Then Margaret went East to visit a friend of
hers. That was thirty years ago. I was going to Washington to appear
before an army board that was investigating some claims that grew out
of the war, and I went with her and left her in New York. We made a
fine lark of the trip. When I left her with her friends I said, ‘Don’t
forget Morris; he’s back there working for you.’
“My errand in Washington kept me longer than I expected. Margaret went
home alone finally, and when I got back, a little later, I found that
it was all off between her and your father. The girl had never been
away from home before, and the people she visited put her through
lively paces. It was easy to admire her, and the admiration from
strangers went to her head. Mariona wasn’t very gay in those days,
and Margaret had missed a good deal of the social life that she was
entitled to.”
The old man paused, lost in thought, and Morris was glad of the
silence. He was trying to construct for himself the past,--to see his
father as Rodney Merriam had painted him, and to see, too, Margaret
Merriam as she had been when his father knew and loved her.
Merriam was feeling about for matches,--a sign that he was ready to
resume; and Morris again struck a light for him.
“There’s no use going into it. She stopped writing to your father
without any warning that she had changed. She was completely carried
away with the excitement of her New York experiences. Morris came to
Washington and asked me what to do, and I sent him to New York to see
her and fix it up; but it did no good. She was not ready to settle
down yet a while, she told him. I supposed it would all come right,
for I had faith in her. She was a true-hearted, gentle woman, but she
was proud and headstrong; and your father had his pride, too. I don’t
blame him for taking it hard. He closed his office here and went back
to Tippecanoe. I don’t believe they ever saw each other again. When she
came home she was her old self; she had been having her fling, and she
didn’t understand that the same glamour hadn’t blinded all of us.
“She really expected your father to meet her on the old footing. She
had cared for him a great deal, and it was the first great shock of
her life to find that a man whose heart she had trifled with did not
seek her again when she was ready for him. But it had cut into him
deep; your father took things hard. It was temperamental, I suppose. I
was a loser, too, in all this. I lost the first and best friend I ever
had. I rarely saw him after that. He stayed close to the old college
town. He made himself its best lawyer. He was sent to the legislature
and Congress. He went just so far in politics and then stopped. I
always had an idea that he was merely testing his powers. He wanted to
see what he could do; and finding that he could make it go, he decided
that it wasn’t worth the candle.”
Merriam rose, threw away his cigar and filled his pipe.
“It doesn’t seem quite square to be telling you this. I had never
expected to tell you. I shouldn’t be telling you now if it hadn’t
been,--if it hadn’t been--”
He crossed to where Morris sat and put his hand on the young man’s
shoulder.
“Yes; I know,” said Morris,--“please don’t say it;” knowing that it was
of Zelda that Merriam was thinking.
“My sister never let us know by any conscious sign that she had any
regrets. There was a great spirit in her. She was a thoroughbred. She
was a wonderful woman. But as the years passed, I think she tired of
the strain of playing a part. Your father was getting on; his name was
a good deal in the newspapers in those days. Then suddenly came the
news of his marriage. You know all this. Your mother was a Maryland
woman whom he met in Washington. Up to that time I think Margaret
always thought he would come back to her. She had offers to marry
repeatedly, but she stayed at home up there in the old house until our
father and mother died. I always had the curse,--the _Wanderlust_. I
sometimes wake up in the morning, even now, with a mad sort of hunger
to be moving. I’ve put all my maps in the garret. The very sight of one
makes me want to pack my trunk. But I’m getting old and I don’t want to
be shipped home in a box.
“I’ll finish my story. I went away for a long trip late in the
seventies, and when I got back my sister was about to be married,--to
Ezra Dameron. He had lived here for a good many years. He was one
of those psalm-singing fellows who build their lives on the church,
and have a smile for everybody. I had never known him well--he is
somewhat my senior--and was much older than my sister. He was a
fairly presentable man in those days,--the old clothes and hatchet
and nails came later. He had an established business and was an
eminently respectable citizen. You know the rest of the story. My
mind’s wandering to-night. I’m getting old and I don’t see anything
very cheerful ahead and mighty little that’s pleasant behind. I’m a
failure,--only, I hope, not a very conspicuous one. I never tried very
hard. But at times I’ve had some fun.”
“You are hard on yourself. It’s a bad frame of mind to get into.”
“But the frame’s hung,--and the picture isn’t attractive. One of these
days the wire will break and the whole thing will go to smash.” And the
old man laughed at the conceit.
“My father told me once that you were the finest man he had ever known.
I remember it very well. I was a kid at the time, playing one afternoon
on the hillside over at Tippecanoe, where we lived. It was Fourth of
July, the first one I remember much about. Father got out his sword for
me to play with; he told me you had given it to him.”
“He hadn’t forgotten?” and Merriam smiled in a gentle, sweet way that
made something very like tears come into Leighton’s eyes. “He hadn’t
forgotten?” the old man repeated. “God! It was after Shiloh,--and that
was yesterday!”
“He talked about you often. The war had meant a great deal to him. But
I could never get him to talk to me about himself. I used to ask him
for war stories, but he always put me off.”
“Most of the old fellows who really saw service felt that way, Morris.
War isn’t funny. It’s what Sherman said it was! Now, I’ve said things
to you, my boy, that I never meant to say to any one. I hope you won’t
think hard of me for telling you of your father and my sister. But ever
since I’ve known you, I’ve thought about it constantly,--your mother
may know about Margaret Merriam. It was like your father to tell her. I
have never seen your mother, but I hope that sometime I may know her.
I may get over to commencement with you next year. They’ve put up a
tablet for the Tippecanoe men who went to the war. And our names are in
the big monument down here. It’s glory enough!”
“Yes, I hope you will go over to Tippecanoe with me sometime. Mother
will be glad to see you.” He hesitated a moment, and added, the words
coming slowly:
“My mother is the dearest woman in the world. She has made every
sacrifice for me. I feel guilty these days about not having her here
with me; but that will come later. You know I always go over to spend
every other Sunday with her. If I prosper I’ll have a house here some
day, so we can be together.”
“I’m not afraid but that you will do what is right. You are the son of
your father. I don’t believe you take things as hard as he did. Don’t
do it. And don’t remember what I have told you to-night. It’s a queer
story. And it hasn’t any moral at all. Your father missed something out
of his life,--the fine ardor of his younger manhood, maybe. But he had
your mother and he had you. It wasn’t he that was punished.”
He was silent a moment, and then blurted out:
“What does Zelda think of Pollock?”
“I don’t know!” Morris rose and walked the length of the room.
“What does she think of you, then?” demanded Merriam, looking directly
at Morris.
“I think she hates me,” said Morris. He turned and left the house
abruptly, leaving the old man alone with his memories.