The fact that Enoch Crane returned Ebner Ford’s call a week later,
proved that whatever his opinion might be of his neighbor, he felt in
duty bound to return his visit. In matters of this kind Enoch was as
punctilious as an ambassador. This man, whom strangers put down as
crusty, cold, crabbed, and uncompanionable, could not be accused of
being a snob or a boor. It may be further said that he decided to call
on Ford purely out of self-respect for himself--in what he conceived
to be the well-bred thing to do. He who had been capable of opening
his door wide to his unwelcome visitor, had waved him courteously
to the comfort of his favorite chair, had listened to his cheap and
overfamiliar talk, and had explained to him as politely as he could
that he had a pressing engagement, pursued, nevertheless, his code
of manners in accordance with what he considered to be his duty as
a gentleman under unfortunate obligations of the kind. Enoch might
easily have barred his door to Ford forever, and thus have banished
the overneighborly promoter and his worthless laundry stock from his
mind. The memory of Ford’s visit had not altogether ceased to irritate
him. There were moments, however, as he chanced to recall it, when his
broader mind and higher intelligence saw its humorous side.
One afternoon, as he was sitting smoking a light Havana in the front
room of the Manhattan Club--a favorite club of Enoch’s, since it was
but a short walk from the top floor of Waverly Place--he broke out in a
broad grin, and rubbed his stubborn chin.
“What cheek that fellow had!” he exclaimed half aloud. “He’s
insufferable.” Then he began to laugh softly to himself, and as he
laughed Ford’s calm effrontery seemed all the more amusing.
“I’ll go down and call on him to-morrow afternoon,” he muttered,
and straightway made a note of it in a small, well-thumbed leather
memorandum-book, which he invariably carried in his vest pocket, next
to his reading-glasses. Had any one chanced to glance into this little
book, filled with interesting engagements, they would have read the
complete diary of Enoch’s daily life. The leaf he had turned to ran as
follows:
_Thursday_: Dinner of the Society of Mechanical Research.
_Saturday_: Geographical Society.
_Friday_: Dinner to Commander Nelson.
_Saturday_: Meeting at Century.
_Tuesday_: Rear-Admiral Mason to lunch--Daly’s--Union Club.
_Sunday_: Joseph Jefferson’s birthday.
Monday afternoon was free, however, and it was here he jotted down
“Ford.”
At five o’clock Monday, Ebner Ford answered Enoch’s knock at his door
in his carpet slippers and shirt-sleeves, both of which he apologized
for, recovered an alpaca office coat from Mrs. Ford’s bedroom closet,
retained the slippers, declared he had just had a nap after a heavy
business day, regretted his stepdaughter was out, singing up-town at a
tea, and assured his visitor that his better half would be dressed to
receive him in just a minute.
“Damn glad to see you,” said Ford, straightening his white tie with a
nervous wrench in the folding-bed mirror. “Sort of missed you, Crane.
Busy, I suppose? Well, we’re all busy. The duller business is, the
busier I get. Common sense, ain’t it? ‘Early bird gets the worm,’ as
the feller said. Come to think of it, most of my big deals in life
have come from gittin’ up early--gittin’ after ’em--gittin’ after the
other feller before he gits after you.” Ford winked his left eyelid at
Enoch. “When you’ve got as many irons in the fire as I have, Crane,” he
declared, “it don’t do to let ’em get cold. Set down, won’t you, and
make yourself at home.”
So far it had not occurred to him to offer his guest a seat.
“Take that there rocker,” he said with insistence; “best in the market.
Sid Witherall made that rocker. You know the Witherall brothers, I
suppose; big lumber people up-State; slapped right into the furniture
business as easy as slidin’ off a log. That’s one of Sid’s patents.
Spring balance, you see, keeps her rockin’. Sid made a heap of money
out of that contrivance. Sells ’em like hot cakes. Just the thing for
porch or shady nook, country or seaside, an ornament to the home and a
joy to old and young. Well, say--when it comes to advertisin’, Sid’s
about as cute as they make ’em, regular persuader in print. Though if
I do say it, Crane, he’ll have to hop along some to beat our latest
prospectus of the U. F. L. A., Limited. Cast your eye over _that_,
neighbor!” he exclaimed, jerking a circular from a bundle on his
roll-top desk, fresh from the printer’s. He handed it to Enoch with a
triumphant air.
“Thank you,” said Enoch quietly, as he accepted the proffered rocker.
He put on his reading-glasses, and began to peruse the latest circular
of the United Family Laundry Association with grim resignation, Ford,
with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, waiting in silence
for him to finish.
“Pretty neat, ain’t it?” he declared, watching Enoch as he read
on. “Gets at the customer first crack out of the box with a hearty
handshake, inspires confidence at low rates. That there line,” he
explained, pointing with a long finger to: “Don’t damn your shirts if
you find they don’t fit when they come back from the wash. Damn the
laundry. We guarantee no profanity in our work.” “That line’s mine,
Crane.”
“I might have guessed so,” said Enoch, glancing up at the promoter over
the fine gold rims of his spectacles. “You seem to have been born, Mr.
Ford, with a--er--what--shall I say?--an inborn talent--to--er--catch
the public.”
“Been so since I was a boy,” declared Ford with enthusiasm. “Always
seemed to come natural to me. Why, Crane, I warn’t but just turned
sixteen when I was out for myself on the road makin’ sometimes as high
as a hundred and fifty dollars a week sellin’ ‘The Elixir of Youth.’
Take it along up Lake Champlain and down the Vermont side during
fair-time; why, them ’way-backs would crowd up and slap out a dollar
for a bottle quick as a trout takes a grasshopper.”
“Harmless, I hope?” remarked Enoch.
“Harmless!” Ford grinned and scratched his head. “Well, Crane, I wasn’t
takin’ any chances. A little Epsom salts and brook water, tinctured up
with port wine never hurt ’em any, I guess. Then, of course, they had a
dollar’s worth of excitement in waitin’ to get young. Used to throw in
a mirror and a pocket-comb with every three-bottle sale.”
“A hundred and fifty dollars a week! Ah, you don’t tell me!” exclaimed
Enoch slowly, squaring about in the rocker and scrutinizing Ford
sternly.
“That’s what it amounted to, my friend--clean velvet profit--from
Monday to Saturday night. Not so bad for a youngster of sixteen, was
it? I used to do a lot of talkin’ then. I had to.”
“Naturally you needed a good rest Sundays,” intervened Enoch coldly.
“Oh! Sundays, of course I had to close down the show. But I was pretty
light-fingered on the cornet in those days, and when I struck a fresh
town Sundays I used to lead the church choir. Nothing like a cornet to
fill a meetin’-house. That always netted me a five-dollar note. I tell
daughter she must have somehow inherited her musical talent from me.”
“Inherited?” remarked Enoch dryly.
“Well, of course, not exactly--inherited--I being her stepfather; but
anyway,” he laughed, “music runs in the family. Take Mrs. Ford, for
instance, never took a lesson in her life, but she certainly can play
the piano.”
“Now, Ebner,” protested a voice behind Enoch’s chair.
Mrs. Ford, red from dressing, heralded by the faint rustle of a new
lavender-silk dress, and a strong odor of violet perfume, swept
effusively into the room.
“Well, Mr. Crane!” exclaimed that round little woman. (Mrs. Ford was
really round all over. There were no angles.) “You don’t know how
overjoyed we are to see you; how simply delighted!”
“My wife, Crane,” Ford endeavored to explain. She put forth a plump
hand to Enoch as he rose from the rocker. “Ebner has so often spoken of
you,” she burst out.
“Delighted to meet you, madam,” said Enoch. “I regret not having the
double pleasure of seeing your daughter. Your husband tells me Miss
Preston is out singing at a musicale.”
“At a tea, Mr. Crane,” declared Mrs. Ford, her small mouth pinched
in a set smile. “At the Van Cortlandt’s. I tell Sue she’s getting on
famously; of course you know the Van Cortlandts--as if there was any
one in New York who didn’t. Of course you saw about their niece’s
superb wedding in the papers the other day. Magnificent affair, wasn’t
it?”
“Evidently it escaped me,” confessed Enoch.
“Why, Mr. Crane, the papers were full of it! As I tell Sue, when you do
go into society, go into the best.”
“You are right, madam,” returned Enoch. “There is nothing rarer than
good society; the best is none too good. It is more often shockingly
bad.”
“But of course the Van Cortlandts, Mr. Crane. Their wealth and
position----”
Enoch did not reply.
“Sue says their house on Fifth Avenue is a palace of luxury!” exclaimed
her mother.
“Window-curtains alone cost forty thousand dollars, they claim,” put in
Ford over Enoch’s shoulder.
“Well,” sighed the little woman, “when you have millions--do be seated,
won’t you? I’ve disturbed you, I fear. Don’t fib--I have, haven’t
I?--just as you were having a good old chat with Ebner. Ah, you men,
when you get together! Of course you can tell I’m a Southerner, can’t
you, Mr. Crane? They say we old families from North Carolina never
quite lose our accent. Sue was speaking about it at the Van Cortlandts
only the other day.”
“Worth about three millions, ain’t he?” interrupted Ford.
“Who--Sam Van Cortlandt?” inquired Enoch, turning sharply to him as
Mrs. Ford subsided on the sofa, and began to smooth out the wrinkles in
her new lavender-silk dress with an air of a duchess trying to decide
whether or not she should give it to the poor.
“Wasn’t it him that made that big corner in cotton about ten years
ago?” asked the promoter.
“Yes,” said Enoch. “That was Sam Van Cortlandt.”
“Biggest thing ever done, wa’n’t it?”
“Yes, Mr. Ford, in the way of unprincipled scoundrelism it _was_,”
declared Enoch with some heat. “Piracy on the high seas of finance.
Piracy, pure and simple,” he declared, his stern voice rising savagely.
“Why, Mr. Crane, you surprise me!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford.
“Piracy, madam; there’s no other word for it.”
“Um!” exclaimed Ford. “You call a man a pirate and a scoundrel, because
he’s successful--because he’s got grit, and nerve, and brains enough
to carry a deal through that made him, if I recollect it right, over a
million dollars in a single day?”
“I do,” snapped Enoch, “when that million means the financial ruin
of hundreds of honest families. Sam Van Cortlandt ruined them by the
wholesale. He ruined them from New Orleans to San Francisco,” he cried
hotly. “Many of them have never recovered.”
Mrs. Ford raised her thin eyebrows to the speaker in silent
astonishment.
“Six months later,” continued Enoch brusquely, squaring himself before
the fireless grate, his hands clenched behind him, “Van Cortlandt again
held his grip on the cotton market. Those who had managed to escape
the first crash, went down under the second. A few came out limping,
but he got most of them in the end--more than one he drove to suicide.
Then they thought of running him for governor. Instead, the Supreme
Court ran him uncomfortably close to the penitentiary for complicity in
bribery relative to his mining territory in Montana. You have asked me
about Sam Van Cortlandt. Very well; I have told you.”
He shut his square jaws hard, and gazed for some seconds at the pattern
in the faded carpet.
Mrs. Ford did not utter a syllable; she sat immovable on the sofa,
redder under the shock of Enoch’s tirade, though none too willing to
believe it. The Van Cortlandt’s millions and social position, their
niceness to her daughter, and the glamour of her being welcomed to
their exclusive society serving only too readily as a balm to heal the
gaping wound left by Enoch’s words.
Enoch had slashed deep; he had bared the truth about Sam Van Cortlandt
down to the bone.
The promoter looked up and cleared his throat.
“Ain’t you exaggerating a little, friend?” he ventured blandly.
“Exaggerating!” Enoch jerked up his square jaws, and protruded his
under lip, a gesture peculiar to him when he was roused. He focussed
a kindling eye on his questioner: “Do you suppose, sir, I do not know
what I am talking about? I am not given to making statements which have
no foundation.”
“But all that which you speak of, Mr. Crane, is--is happily in the
past,” remarked Mrs. Ford sweetly, endeavoring to soften the awkward
pause that followed. “As I tell Ebner, we should always be ready to
forgive others their--their little mistakes. Oh! I believe strongly in
forgiveness, Mr. Crane--’deed I do. I’m just that way, Mr. Crane, and
always have been, since I was a girl--my old North Carolinian blood, I
suppose--” Her monotonous, high-keyed voice softened as she spoke, and
Enoch caught plainly now her Southern accent, touched slightly with the
lazy cadence of the negro, as she continued to dilate upon the beauty
and virtues of Mrs. Van Cortlandt and the lavish generosity of her
husband.
“What’s past is past,” was Ford’s profound remark, when she had
finished. “He got his money, anyway. If he’d laid down and give
up, somebody else ’ed trampled over him--done the trick, and got
it--wouldn’t they? I’ll bet you a thousand dollars even they would
have.” (Ford’s bets were never lower than a thousand.) “I guess when
you sift the whole thing down, friend, you’ll find Sam Van Cortlandt
was up against a pretty big proposition. It was win out or die.”
Enoch lifted a face that quivered with sudden rage, but he did not open
his lips.
“Hark!” said Mrs. Ford excitedly, as she caught the sound of a quick,
familiar step on the stairs. “That’s Sue now,” and she rushed to open
the door. She confided to Sue in an excited whisper as she tripped
up to the landing that Mr. Crane was there; saw for herself that her
daughter was trim and unruffled, smoothed a wisp of her fair hair in
place, and ushered her into the sitting-room, beaming with motherly
pride.
There was a refreshing cheerfulness about the young girl as she entered
that sent the hard lines out of Enoch’s face before her mother had
presented her. As he looked up critically at the girl before him, her
charm and refinement were evident to him before she had even opened
her pretty lips or stretched forth her shapely gloved hand, which she
did with so much unassuming frankness that Enoch held it gratefully.
Her cheeks were rosier than usual to-day. Evidently she had thoroughly
enjoyed herself at the tea. There was a certain radiance and sparkle
in her blue eyes, as she tossed her roll of music on the little
Chippendale table and hastily drew off her gloves, that captivated him.
He had already banished Van Cortlandt’s failings from his mind. It
seemed incredible to him as he watched her, that she was really part
of the household in which, for the last quarter of an hour, he had
listened to the ill-disguised social aspirations of her mother and the
crude, mercenary view-point of her stepfather. The sight of Sue warmed
his heart; again his keen eyes kindled, this time with satisfaction.
“Your mother tells me you have been singing at a tea,” said Enoch in
a kindly tone, as he released her hand. “I had no idea you were so
gifted, my dear,” he continued pleasantly. “And you made a success? I’m
sure of it.”
Sue flushed under the compliment.
“I did my best, Mr. Crane,” she confessed simply, with a forced little
laugh.
“The Van Cortlandts have asked her to sing again next week,” declared
her mother triumphantly.
“Well, say, girlie! that looks like success, don’t it?” broke in Ebner
Ford. “Made a hit, did you?”
He slammed down the top of the roll-top desk, and locked it. Sue
glanced at him with a pained expression.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Ford, it will be a good many years before I can really
make a success,” she said evenly. Then turning to Enoch seriously: “I’m
only a beginner, you know, Mr. Crane.”
“Of course you are,” he returned, “but there is a beginning to all art,
a hard beginning, and you are beginning bravely, my dear. There is no
short cut leading to art. It is a rough and stony road--mostly up-hill
and very little down-dale, and for the most of its length hedged
with thorns, masking so many pitfalls that many give up, faint and
disheartened by the wayside, long before they reach the broad plateau
of success at the top, and can stand there looking down over the valley
of shadows and trials they have struggled up through safely.”
Sue caught her breath and looked at Enoch with her blue eyes wide open
with eager interest. “Oh, how wonderful!” she cried. “Do go on.”
“I am not saying this to discourage you, my dear,” he continued, “but
to encourage you. You are so young, so rich in years to come--years
that we old fellows no longer have. Do your best; sing on to the best
of your ability. In every fresh effort, in every new note lies the
real lesson. Think of how happy you will be when at last you are sure
of yourself, sure in making others feel what you feel. In painting, in
sculpture, and in literature it is the same, and in no art is this rare
ability of making others feel what you interpret so rare as in music.
Music without it is simply a display of pretty noises. Only the artist
can touch the heart.” The ugly little room was silent as he ceased
speaking. Sue’s eyes were shining.
“And you were not frightened?” asked Enoch.
“Yes, Mr. Crane,” declared Sue frankly, “I was. I was just scared to
death before all those people. New York is so critical, you know.
They have a way of looking at you when you begin as if they had made
up their minds to be bored. Think of it, mother, the ball-room was
packed--the conservatory, too. Mrs. Van Cortlandt, you remember, said
she had only asked a few intimate friends to drop in for a cup of tea.”
“Gorgeous affair, of course,” declared the mother solemnly. “I
expected it would be, honey. The Van Cortlandts always entertain so
extravagantly. Well--” she sighed deeply--“when one has millions, Mr.
Crane! Tell me, did Miss Stimpson play your accompaniments? I worried
so, fearing she would disappoint you at the last moment; you know,
honey, how uncertain she is.”
At which Sue declared that that near-sighted and nervous girl, Mazie
Stimpson, had sent word at the last moment that it was impossible for
her to be there, owing to a distressing attack of sore throat.
“How outrageous of her!” exclaimed the mother. “No wonder, darling, you
were nervous.”
“Pity you didn’t go along with her, Emma,” ventured Ford meekly; “been
just the thing.”
“I certainly now wish I had,” declared Mrs. Ford firmly. “Sue is so
dependent on a good accompanist, Mr. Crane.”
“Ah, but I found one, mother,” announced Sue, with so much satisfaction
that Enoch pricked up his ears. “Who do you think came to my rescue? A
Mr. Lamont. He plays exquisitely. Wasn’t it kind of him?”
“Mr. Lamont!” exclaimed the mother. “Not Mr. Jack Lamont?” she asked,
beaming with interest.
Sue nodded. “Yes, mother--Mr. Jack Lamont. He’s simply marvellous.
He gives one so much confidence when he’s at the piano. He’s so
wonderfully clever in his phrasing, and never rushes you. I came home
with him, mother. He insisted on taking me home in his brougham.”
This time Enoch caught his breath. “I begged him to come up, but he
had to go back for Mrs. Lamont. He told me such a lot of interesting
things--about his polo-ponies and his yacht, and his cottage at
Newport. The Van Cortlandts adore him.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford. “You, of course, have heard of
Mr. Lamont,” she said, turning to Enoch. “‘Handsome Jack Lamont,’ they
call him. He’s such a lion in society. They say no cotillon can be a
success without him. You see his name everywhere.”
Enoch’s jaw closed with a grip; when it relaxed he confessed bluntly
that he had not only heard about Mr. Lamont, but had seen him. That
he was, in fact, a member of one of his clubs, where Mr. Lamont was
not only to be seen, but heard. He did not add “drunk or sober.”
Neither did he dilate upon the various escapades of that gentleman,
or the strained relations that had existed during several reckless
conspicuous years between Mrs. Lamont and her society-pampered husband,
or that his polo-ponies were fed and cared for, his steam-yacht run,
and the luxuries of his Newport cottage paid for out of Mrs. Lamont’s
check-book--Jack Lamont’s favorite volume, the stubs of whose pages
bore evidence of Mrs. Lamont’s resigned generosity in matters that did
not concern the public. Instead, Enoch held his tongue and started to
take his leave, having left in Sue Preston’s heart a certain friendly
reverence. In Enoch, in his charm of manner, in his kindly outspoken
sincerity, she saw those qualities so sadly lacking in her stepfather.
Enoch was real. She already felt a strange confidence in him. From
the little she had heard about him as their neighbor--a reputation of
being brusque and ill-natured--she saw only too plainly now that it
was a mask, back of which lay a personality, full of so much charm and
kindliness, of insight and understanding, of that great gentleness
which is part of every great gentleman, that she felt she might come
to him gladly for advice as a daughter might come to a father. Had he
not already encouraged her? and so eloquently and graciously that she
could have listened to him for hours.
In the brief conversation that ensued as he neared the door to take
his leave, Ebner Ford referred again to the hospitality of the young
architects on the third floor, a tactless speech which Mrs. Ford
received frigidly, and which forced Sue to confess guardedly:
“Strange--wasn’t it, mother?--Mr. Grimsby was at the Van Cortlandts’.”
“At the _Van Cortlandts’_! I trust it was by invitation,” returned
her mother stiffly, recovering from her astonishment. “Nothing would
surprise me in regard to that young man’s ability to force himself
anywhere. Imagine, Mr. Crane--we were hardly----”
“But, mother, I only saw him for an instant, just as Mr. Lamont and
I were leaving,” explained Sue. “He told me he had known the Van
Cortlandts for years.”
“A most excellent young fellow,” declared Enoch briskly. “A most
charming young fellow,” he insisted. “We are sadly in need of young
men of his good taste and ability, when you consider, Mrs. Ford, how
poverty-stricken in style our architecture has become. How many horrors
in brownstone we are obliged to look at and live in. Atrocious jumbles,
beastly attempts at Ionic and Corinthian--ugly, misshapen, and badly
conceived--nightmares, madam, in stone--scarcely a detail that does
not offend the eyes. Roman, French, Renaissance, and Tudor stewed
together, capped by mansard roofs, and decorated with vagaries from the
fret-saw, the lathe, and the cold chisel in the hands of bumpkins--we
are sadly in need of a revolution in all this. New York is growing;
it will be a beautiful city some day, but it will take many years to
make it so. Young men like Mr. Grimsby and his colleague, Mr. Atwater,
I tell you are worth their weight in gold.” And with that he took his
leave, not, however, without the consciousness as he did so of a pair
of blue eyes smiling into his own.
“Jack Lamont!” he muttered to himself, as he climbed the stairs to his
rooms to dress for dinner at the club. “And he brought that child home
in his brougham? Merciful Heaven!”