AT the breakfast table the next morning neither Tommy nor Mr. Leigh
made any allusion to the stock-selling campaign. But as his father was
leaving Tommy told him:
“Colonel Willetts said last night he would help me place the stock. I'm
to call at his office again.”
“Do so by all means, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, with an almost cold
formality. “Be sure you make the points I explained to you yesterday,
particularly the probable permanency of dividends under a far-sighted
policy, and the equally certain depreciation of both principal and
income from real-estate holdings in New York City. A political or even a
social revolution will hurt such a business as Mr. Thompson has planned
far less than it will real estate, which not only cannot be hidden or
moved, but has innumerable natural enemies, such as the shifting centers
of trade and fashion and inefficient or corrupt municipal government.
You might tell him that under certain circumstances all land partakes of
the quality of mud, and the wisest of men can get stuck in the mud.”
Tommy gasped. The man he had known as his father had spoken like this.
Mr. Leigh went on judicially:
“Ask him whether his gains from the unearned increment as well as from
increases in values in certain sections have fully offset his losses
from the decline of what he considered choice property ten or fifteen
years ago. Ask him whether he thinks the big financial institutions,
like the life-insurance companies, are comfortable over their ownership
of properties they have had to take over to protect their own gilt-edge
first mortgages. Real estate is a tradition of his family, and you must
make him think of the future. Good morning, Thomas.”
His father was more of a business man than Tommy had ever dreamed. His
advice was sound. But--
A theory came to Tommy ready-made, from the birthplace of all
explanations. Obviously long years of brooding on his dead wife and on
what he had done to keep his promise to her had made Mr. Leigh morbid.
He had remained a bookkeeper because the only way in which he could
continue to avert discovery was by remaining where he could conceal his
deeds. It made the repayment of the seventeen thousand dollars more
than ever urgent. Where could Tommy borrow it, since it was out of the
question to think of earning so vast a sum in a short time? He must
consult Mr. Thompson. If he could not confide fully, he might at least
put a hypothetical question, give hints, sound Mr. Thompson somehow. But
before he could speak to Thompson he must sell the stock.
He was to lunch at the college dub with Rivington. He doubtless would
meet friends there who might take a few hundred shares. The dollars that
Tommy had to raise suddenly became so heavy that Tommy despaired.
At the dub he was lucky enough to meet Red Mead, whose father was a
capitalist and--so Red said--had been very successful in finding highly
profitable investments in all sorts of manufacturing enterprises.
Red told Tommy he was sure the old gentleman would fall for a hundred
thousand bucks, provided the talk was sufficiently convincing to justify
Mr. Mead in sending an expert to look over the property. Whereat Tommy
promised to call on Mr. Mead, though he was almost certain Red's father
was the kind that wanted big dividends. And Bull Wilson told him that
only the day before his father was regretting not having taken a block
of Bishop-Wolf automobile stock that was offered to him for thirty-five
thousand dollars three years before and was now worth a million.
“He's your meat, Tommy. He's gone to Washington with his patent lawyer.
When he comes back I'll tell him that I've asked you to do me the
favor to call on him before you see any one else.” Tommy did not permit
himself to feel encouraged by these promises; nevertheless, he decided
not to see Colonel Willetts until after he had tried elsewhere.
But Rivington insisted upon going to his father's office that very
afternoon.
“They are always after him. Every time he invests in a new thing or
puts up another building he talks poverty for a month. You just chase
yourself down-town right away.”
Rivington's obvious eagerness to see Tommy succeed had the effect of
making Tommy feel that, after all, his friends were in New York. The
work lay in Dayton, but his happiness in New York. For a moment, as he
held Rivington's hand, Tommy felt that his stay in Dayton thereafter
must be tinged by the regret that he could not see his best friend every
day. But the work was too important. If only Rivington would move
to Dayton! Of course if Rivington was there Marion would visit him
frequently. What a place Dayton would be evenings!
In the Subway on his way to Colonel Willetts's office Tommy's mood left
him. The New York he saw about him, with its alien faces--all kinds of
faces and all alien--was not the place for him to work in. And his own
particular New York was very small--a city with a score of inhabitants.
His real life could never merge with the life of the strange and
dislikable New York he saw in the streets and in the shops and in the
office buildings. He could not work here, where every man was concerned
with himself and no one else, and so plainly showed it in his face. New
York could never be a city of brothers, of men who wished both to be
helped and to help. He would go back to Dayton, of course. And he must
take back checks for a total of two hundred thousand dollars. He must!
And he would!
He paused a moment in the hallway of the sixth floor of the Willetts
Building, one of Wall Street's earliest skyscrapers, and considered a
moment how he should proceed. He was about to grasp the knob of the door
of Colonel Willetts's office when the door opened and Mr. Leigh came
out.
“Father!” cried Tommy. His plans, not very elaborate, were knocked into
a cocked hat. Misery, indefinite but poignant, filled him.
“Thomas!” gasped Mr. Leigh. He was more startled than his son. To Tommy
his father's look was one of guilt. And a guilty look on that face was
like turning the calcium-light on the secret.
“I--I had to see Colonel Willetts on bank business,” stammered Mr.
Leigh. He glanced at Tommy uncomfortably and quickly looked away. Then
he said, apologetically, almost pleadingly: “I thought it expedient,
while I was there, to speak about your errand to New York. I--I gave him
my opinion of the--investment.”
“But I asked you--I hoped you would not speak about it,” said Tommy,
unhappy rather than annoyed. And then, with the illogicality of sorrow,
Tommy thought that his father knew so little about the company that any
advice he might give about the investment could not be strictly honest
advice.
“Colonel Willetts is a director of the Marshall National, and our bank
has close relations with it. I have done no harm to you, Thomas.” Tommy
was frowning because of his own disinclination to recognize ungrudgingly
that his father had been prompted by loyalty and love. Old people
were like that. And now his father was actually and visibly afraid of
incurring the displeasure of the son for whom he had done so much--too
much! And that son actually was thinking of his own grievances!
Moreover, the damage, if any, was done.
“You meant for the best, dad!” said Tommy, with a smile, and held out
his hand. “I expect you will have to wait till I grow up before I get
some sense.”
His father's hand clutched his so tightly that Tommy's resentment turned
into remorse.
“I'll make the points you told me last night, dad. They are mighty good
points!” And he meant it.
“Good luck, Thomas,” said the old man, more composedly, and walked away.
Tommy looked after him, and for the first time in his life realized that
Mr. Leigh's shoulders were inclined to stoop. Years and years of bending
over his ledger had left on him the mark of the modern galley slave.
Tommy's dislike of bookkeeping rose on the spot to a positive hatred.
Also, the stoop showed the weight of a burden heavy beyond words!
He decided that the moment the money was paid back he would ask his
father to move to Day-ton, far away from the bank, and live with his
only son, who by that time should be able to support both.
“He will never leave the old house,” decided Tommy next. It meant so
much to him: the house where Tommy's mother had lived, where Tommy was
born, where she died. The sentiment and also the wing-clipping habit of
a lifetime made sudden changes dangerous to old age.
“A hell of a world!” came next.
Well, work that a man could take an interest in was invented so that a
man need not care whether or not it was a hell of a world.