ROMPED WITH THE GIRL.
The morning was heavy and almost breathless. The smoke of the city
hung low in the streets. Henry had passed through a dreamful and
uneasy sleep. He thought it wise to remain in his room until the
merchant was gone down town, and troublously he had begun to doze
again when Ellen's voice aroused him. "Come on down!" she cried,
tapping on the door. "You just ought to see what the newspapers have
said about you. Everybody in the neighborhood is staring at us. Come
on down."
Witherspoon was sitting on a sofa with a pile of newspapers beside
him. He looked up as Henry entered, and in the expression of his face
there was no displeasure to recall the controversy of the night
before.
"Well, sir," said he, "they have given you a broad spread."
The reporters had done their work well. It was a great sensation.
Henry was variously described. One report said that he had a
dreaminess of eye that was not characteristic of this strong,
pragmatic family; another declared him to be "tall, rather handsome,
black-bearded, and with the quiet sense of humor that belongs to the
temperament of a modest man." One reporter had noticed that his
Southern-cut clothes did not fit him.
"He might have said something nicer than that," Ellen remarked, with
a natural protest against this undue familiarity.
"I don't know why we should be spoken of as a pragmatic family," said
Mrs. Witherspoon. "Of course your father has always been in business,
but I don't see"--
Witherspoon began to grunt. "It's all right," said he. "It's all
right." He had to say something. "Come, I must get down town."
"Shall I go with you?" Henry asked.
For a moment Witherspoon was silent. "Not unless you want to," he
answered.
They sat down to breakfast. Henry nervously expected another outbreak.
The merchant began to say something, but stopped on a half utterance
and cleared his throat. "It is coming," Henry thought.
"I have studied over our talk of last night," said Witherspoon, "and
while I won't say that you may be right, or have any excuse for
presuming that you are right, I am inclined to indulge that wild
scheme of yours for a while. My impression is that you'll soon get
sick of it."
Mrs. Witherspoon looked at him thankfully. "And you will give him a
chance, father," she said.
"Didn't I say I would? Isn't that exactly what I said? Gracious alive,
don't make me out a grinding and unyielding monster. We'll look round,
Henry, and see what can be done. Brooks may know of some opening.
You'd better rest here to-day."
"I am deeply grateful, sir, for the concession you have made," Henry
replied. "I know how you feel on the subject, and I regret"--
"All right."
"Regret that I was forced"--
"I said it was all right."
"Forced to oppose you, but I don't think that you'll have cause to
feel ashamed of me."
"You have already made me feel proud of your manliness," said
Witherspoon.
Henry bowed, and Mrs. Witherspoon gave her husband an impulsive look
of gratitude. The merchant continued:
"You have refused my offer, but you have not presumed upon your own
position. Sincerity expects a reward, as a rule, and when a man is
sincere at his own expense, there is something about him to admire.
You don't prefer to live idly--to draw on me--and I should want no
stronger proof that you are, indeed, my son. It is stronger than the
gold chain you brought home with you, for that might have been found;
but manly traits are not to be picked up; they come of inheritance.
Well, I must go. I will speak to Brooks and see if anything can be
done."
Rain began to fall. How full of restful meditation was this
dripping-time, how brooding with half-formed, languorous thoughts that
begin as an idea and end as a reverie. Sometimes a soothing spirit
which the sun could not evoke from its boundless fields of light comes
out of the dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day promises so much, so
builds our hopes, that our keenest disappointments seem to come on a
radiant morning, but on a dismal day, when nothing has been promised,
a straggling pleasure is accidentally found and is pressed the closer
to the senses because it was so unexpected.
To Henry came the conviction that he was doing his duty, and yet he
could not at times subdue the feeling that pleasant environment was
the advocate that had urged this decision. But he refused to argue
with himself. Sometimes he strode after Mrs. Witherspoon as she went
about the house, and he knew that she was happy because be followed
her; and up and down the hall he romped with Ellen. They termed it a
frolic that they should have enjoyed years ago, and they laughingly
said that from the past they would snatch their separated childhood
and blend it now. It was a back-number pleasure, they agreed, but
that, like an old print, it held a charm in its quaintness. She
brought out a doll that had for years been asleep in a little blue
trunk. "Her name is Rose," she said, and with a broad ribbon she
deftly made a cap and put it on the doll's head. After a while Rose
was put to sleep again--the bright little mummy of a child's
affection, Henry called her--and the playmates became older. She told
him of the many suitors that had sought to woo her; of rich men; of
poor young fellows who strove to keep time to the quick-changing tune
of fashion; of moon-impressed youths who measured their impatient
yearning.
"And when are you going to let one of them take you away?" Henry
asked. Holding his hand, she had led him in front of a mirror.
"Oh, not at all," she answered, smiling at herself and then at him. "I
haven't fallen in love with anybody yet."
"And is that necessary?"
"Why, you know it is, goose. I'd be a pretty-looking thing to marry a
man I didn't love, wouldn't I?"
"You are a pretty thing anyway."
"Oh, do you really think so?"
"I know it."
"You are making fun of me. If you had met me accidentally, would you
have thought so?"
"Surely; my eyes are always open to the truth."
"If I could meet such a man as you are I could love him--'with a
dreaminess of eye not characteristic of this strong, pragmatic
family.'"
She broke away from him, but he caught her. "If I were not related to
you," he said, "I would be tempted to kiss you."
"Oh, you'd be _tempted_ to kiss me, would you? If you were not related
to me I wouldn't let you, but as it is--there!"
His blood tingled. Her hair was falling about her shoulders. For a
moment it was a strife for him to believe that she was his sister.
"Beautiful," he said, running his fingers through her hair. "Somebody
said that the glory of a woman is her hair; and it is true. It is a
glory that always catches me."
"Does it? Well, I must put up my glory before papa comes. Oh, you are
such a romp; but I was just a little afraid of you at first, you were
so sedate and dreamy of eye."
She ran away from him, and looking back with mischief in her eyes, she
hummed a schottish, and keeping time to it, danced up the stairway.
When Witherspoon came to dinner he said that he had consulted Brooks
and that the resourceful manager knew of a possible opening.
The owner of the _Star_, a politician who had been foolish enough to
suppose that with the control of an editorial page he could illumine
his virtues and throw darkness over his faults, was willing to part
with his experiment. "I think that we can get it at a very reasonable
figure," said Witherspoon. And after a moment's silence he added:
"Brooks can pull you a good many advertisements in a quiet way, and
possibly the thing may be made to turn oat all right. But I tell you
again that I am very much disappointed. Your place is with me--but we
won't talk about it. How came you to take up that line of work?"
"I began by selling newspapers."
Mrs. Witherspoon sighed, and the merchant asked: "And did Andrew urge
it?"
"Oh, no. In fact I was a reporter before he knew anything about it."
Witherspoon grunted. "I should have thought," said he, "that your
uncle would have looked after you with more care. Did you receive a
regular course of training?" Henry looked at him. "At school, I mean."
"Yes, in an elementary way. Afterward I studied in the public
library."
"A good school, but not cohesive," Witherspoon replied. "A thousand
scraps of knowledge don't make an education."
"Father, you remember my uncle Harvey," said Mrs. Witherspoon.
"Hum, yes, I remember him."
"Well, his education did not prevent his having a thousand scraps of
knowledge."
"I should think not," Witherspoon replied. "No man's knowledge
interferes with his education."
"My uncle Harvey knew nearly everything," Mrs. Witherspoon went on.
"He could make a clock; and he was one of the best school teachers in
the country. I shouldn't think that education consists in committing a
few rules to memory."
"No, Caroline, not in the committing of a thousand rules to memory,
but without rule there is no complete education."
"I shouldn't think that there could be a complete education anyway,"
she rejoined, in a tone which Henry knew was meant in defense of
himself.
"Of course not," said the merchant, and turning from the subject as
from something that could interest him but little, he again took up
the newspaper project. "We'll investigate that matter to-morrow, and
if you are still determined to go into it, the sooner the better. My
own opinion is that you will soon get tired of it, in view of the
better advantages that I urge upon you, for the worries of an
experimental concern will serve to strengthen my proposal."
"I am resolved that in the end it shall cost you nothing," Henry
replied.
"Hum, we'll see about that. But whatever you do, do it earnestly, for
a failure in one line does not argue success in another direction. In
business it is well to beware of men who have failed. They bring bad
luck. Without success there may be vanity, but there can be but little
pride, little self-respect."
Henry moved uneasily in his chair. "But among those who have failed,"
he replied, "we often find the highest types of manhood."
"Nonsense," rejoined the merchant. "That is merely a poetic idea. What
do you mean by the highest type of manhood? Men whose theories have
all been proved to be wrong? Great men have an aim and accomplish it.
America is a great country, and why? Because it is prosperous."
"I don't mean that failure necessarily implies that a man's aim has
been high," said Henry, "neither do I think that financial success is
greatness. But our views are at variance and I fear that we shall
never be able to reconcile them. I may be wrong, and it is more than
likely that I am. At times I feel that there is nothing in the entire
scheme of life. If a man is too serious we call him a pessimist; if he
is too happy we know that he is an idiot."
"Henry, you are too young a man to talk that way."
"My son," said Mrs. Witherspoon, "the Lord has made us for a special
purpose, and we ought not to question His plans."
"No, mother," Ellen spoke up, "but we should like to know something
about that especial part of the plan which relates to us."
"My daughter, this is not a question for you to discuss. Your duty in
this life is so clearly marked out that there can be no mistake about
it. With my son it has unfortunately been different."
The girl smiled. "A woman's duty is not so clearly marked out now as
it used to be, mother. As long as man was permitted to mark it out her
duty was clear enough--to him."
"Hum!" Witherspoon grunted, "we are about to have a woman's
advancement session. Will you please preside?" he added, nodding at
Ellen. She laughed at him. He continued: "After a while Vassar will be
nothing but a woman's convention. Henry, we will go down to-morrow and
look after that newspaper."