IX

It may be remembered that Truesdale, in making an estimate of the

resources of his native town upon the occasion of his return to it, had

scheduled the five-o'clock tea as the last resource of all. If we find

him present, then, at such a function, we may imagine him to have found

the possibilities of local entertainment much slighter than he had

figured, and time already hanging somewhat heavily on his hands.

Nor need we make any allowance for the fact that the debutante was his

sister, and the scene of her coming-out his own mother's house. The

catholic tolerance of his sympathies was such as to make his interest in

his relatives, as relatives, no greater than his interest in other people

whose general qualities would be likely to receive equal recognition from

the world at large; and his outlook was so broad as to make his father's

house but one of many houses, and to subject happenings in it to the same

criterion as would be used to judge and rate the happenings in any other

house throughout Christendom. Truesdale considered himself as admirably

and flawlessly a cosmopolite.

Yes, he had done his sister's tea, but not until he had done almost

everything else. He went to the few good concerts that offered, he made a

fortnightly visit to the art stores, and he patronized (so far as he

could endure them) the theatres--the chief and final resource of the

town. But the concerts were a factor far from constant; and the theatres

offered scarcely once a month a play that a person of taste and

intelligence cared to sit through. Abroad he had been a valiant

first-nighter; but he learned presently that at home the house for a

premiere was composed largely of people whose tickets came from the

exposition of theatre "paper" throughout the week in their

storefronts--it was on Monday evening that they were paid off; and

he found himself little disposed to join in judgment with a raft of small

shop-keepers, until he recollected that a premiere was not a premiere,

after all--the play's footing having already been secured at some other

place, at some other time, before some other audience.

As for the picture-dealers, he complained that a canvas of any importance

was likely to be displayed after a fashion frankly mercantile, in the

show-window of the shop--a step which met more than halfway the public

demand for free art, but which unjustly caused many an original to be

taken for a copy. "Perhaps, though," he would say, "the public has got so

far along as to judge of a picture independent of its surroundings.

Possibly the crimson draperies and the row of gas-jets have really come

to be superfluous."

He missed, furthermore, many of his accustomed pleasures and

conveniences. He was astonished to find a metropolis without a promenade.

True, on Sunday afternoons there was a good deal of strolling up and down

along a half-mile of the lake shore; but he never observed that the

people whose houses overlooked all this strolling ever took any part in

it, and he never learned that they enjoyed this diversion anywhere else.

"Singular," he said; "no concerted walking or driving. No understanding

as to any time for it; no understanding as to any place for it. Not the

slightest social organization for out-door life; how much there must

be"--(with a backward thought towards Rosy's debut)--"in-doors--somewhere!"

He deplored the absolute non-existence of the institution known as the

café--all the more, in view of the long months of waiting that must

intervene before he should be able to gain membership in some club. The

café, that crowning gem in the coronet of civilization--the name was

everywhere, the thing nowhere. Nothing offered save a few large places of

general and promiscuous resort, which, under one ameliorative title or

another, dispensed prompt refreshment amid furnishings of the most

reverberant vulgarity.

"It's impossible!" he said in one of these places one day to one of his

artists, a new-comer from Milan. "Either you stand here in front of this

counter facing all that superfluous glassware, and that cheap young man

with the dreadful hair, and the reflections of all those hideous daubs

behind you, or else you retire to one of those cubby-holes along the side

there and make the disposal of a bottle of light beer seem a disreputable

orgy or a dark conspiracy, or a combination of both."

"Not one word against the pictures," replied the other. "How else here do

I live?"

"No journals," pursued Truesdale; "no demi-tasse, no clientèle, no

leisure. No," he added, with the idea of a more general summing up, "nor

any excursions; nor any general market; nor any military; nor even any

morgue. And five francs for a cab. _Quelle ville_!"

To Truesdale the café was the great social foothold; it was here that he

was accustomed to meet on common ground the whole male section of

society. It was to the café that he would like to lead his young

water-colorist with the portfolio of views from rural Missouri, or his

last new poet with his thin little volume so finely flattened out between

the two millstones of journalism and literature--neither of which, alone,

could have ground him out his grist in livable quantities. In the absence

of the café he led two or three such to the house. It was like thrusting

a lighted candle into a jar of nitrogen. The candle went out at once. And

never came back. To David Marshall, art in all its forms was an

inexplicable thing; but more inexplicable still was the fact that any man

could be so feeble as to yield himself to such trivial matters in a town

where money and general success still stood ready to meet any live,

practical fellow half-way--a fellow, that was to say, who knew an

opportunity when he saw it. The desire of beauty was not an inborn

essential of the normal human being. Art was not an integral part of the

great frame of things; it was a mere surface decoration, and the artist

was but for the adornment of the rich man's triumph--in case the rich man

were, on his side, so feeble as to need to have his triumph adorned. He

himself had taken hold of practical things at an early age; he had made

something out of nothing--a good deal out of nothing; and compared with

this act of creation the fabrication of verses or of pictures was a

paltry affair, indeed.

He was willing enough that his daughters should improve themselves; he

was even proud, in a way, of Jane's ability to keep step with the general

advance of female culture. But for any such turn in one of his sons he

had no sympathy, no patience. He conferred with Truesdale on the possible

reorganization of the business, and put before him the appositeness of

his coming in at such a time; but Truesdale would lift his brows and suck

his lips and study the pattern of the carpet, and mumble something about

packing his trunk and "going somewhere."

His days, in fact, were becoming long--inordinately so; it was to his

evenings that he was coming to look exclusively for diversion. He made

the most of these; he drew them out as long as possible--to

counterbalance the days. He seldom came home before midnight, frequently

not before two or three in the morning; occasionally not at all. In

company with three or four choice spirits, Arthur Paston and his like, he

turned night into day, and was seen now and then at such conjunction of

place and time as would well have justified an explanation to the

sober-minded or even to the comparatively correct. Like his other

associates on these occasions, he still retained the enviable faculty of

being able to "be nice to nice people"; but he acknowledged his taste and

his sensibilities both to be badly lacerated, and he confessed now and

then with a sigh that he had never amused himself so indifferently in his

life.

His sense of ennui was, in fact, driving him out upon society; and the

hopes of his sister, which had drooped somewhat after their first

leaving-out, now began to lift themselves again. Jane, on reviewing

Rosy's début, had arrived at a juster estimate of her own share in it;

she had launched one member of the family very satisfactorily, and she

felt herself prompted to the launching of another.

Rosy was now in the full tide of success. The edge of the wedge had been

set with singular acumen, and the two or three smart blows that followed

had opened up society to her in a twinkling. She had appeared at a few of

the best houses, and had at once entered upon a vogue. Her mirror was

always full of cards, her cards were always full of names, and her own

name was always filling the newspapers. She figured in boxes at

theatre-parties, in booths at fancy fairs. She had already poured tea at

six receptions, and had acted as bridesmaid at two weddings. An incessant

stream had run from the six teapots, and nobody had looked at the two

brides. Jane would sit up in the dim library through the small hours

waiting for Rosy's ring and planning corresponding triumphs for

Truesdale.

Her first and chiefest task was to get him to take society seriously. He

had professed himself as unable to put his finger on it; he asked her

where it was to be found--what was the general platform on which it met.

At the Charity Ball, she had answered him--rightly, perhaps; wrongly,

perhaps. Let us waive the point.

"Then to the Charity Ball I shall go," he had answered, promptly.

"Will you?" shrilled Jane. "Oh, goody! And you won't be disappointed,

either. It's the one great, magnificent thing of the year. Everybody

goes. And they have 'C-h-a-r-i-t-y' in electric lights, and palm-trees,

and champagne, and two different places to eat supper in." Jane had never

attended one of these entertainments; her wealth of picturesque detail

was gathered from the newspapers.

"Ouf!" said Truesdale, indifferently, discounting the magnificence. He

had been to one ball at the British embassy in Rome, and to another at

the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, and did not expect to be impressed. He

rather looked to find this coming occasion like the latter--a

heterogeneous assemblage of elements whose value was doubtful separately

and not much greater collectively.

Jane ran to her fairy godmother; through Mrs. Bates everything appeared

possible. "You must put him on the committee," said Jane; "or you must

make him a floor-manager or something." Jane's head swam with a social

vertigo; she could call spirits from the vasty deep and feel perfectly

sure of their coming.

"Very well," responded Mrs. Bates; "a floor-manager he shall be."

"He'll do it splendidly, too," declared Jane; "he's so alert, and so

self-possessed, and so awfully graceful and good-looking. Just the right

height, and a very handsome figure--don't you think?"

"Too slender."

"Well, of course he's no slugger," retorted Jane, whose thought turned

suddenly towards the youthful footballist at Yale. "Yes," she went on,

"he's got plenty of assurance and readiness, and he'll do beautifully--if

he'll just be disposed to take the trouble. Only--only he doesn't know

anybody, hardly," was her dubious conclusion.

"Never mind," returned Mrs. Bates, genially; "lots of 'em he couldn't

know--there's too many; and lots of 'em he wouldn't want to know. He can

jump about, I imagine, and see that other people are kept jumping about

too. The fewer he knows the better he'll do his work."

She looked at Jane steadily for a moment or two. "One thing more; I want

you to come and sit in my box."

"Me!" squealed Jane. "Oh-h-h!" It was a complicated cry; it indicated

surprise, gratitude, self-depreciation, and (before all) a sense of

divided duty.

Mrs. Bates, all unsuspected by her subject, had taken Jane in hand a

month ago, and had made her at length fairly presentable. Incidentally

she had made herself a martyr. "But never mind," she would say; "the poor

child doesn't know how to do herself justice, so somebody else has got to

do it for her."

After a pretty thorough canvass of Jane--her hands, her hair, her dress,

her carriage, her complexion--she began operations. She went, for

example, to a widely celebrated beautifier, as well as to other dealers

in those lotions and cosmetics which have secured the recommendation of

various singers and professional beauties, and she took Jane with her.

The good woman pretended alarm at the state of her complexion--as if her

robust health, her careful table, her good allowance of sleep, her active

circulation, and her hundred varied forms of daily exercise all went for

naught. So she sat in "parlors" with cloths tied round her neck, and let

people smear her with creams and prod her with electric needles and work

their will on her for the removal of all the "facial blemishes" that

flesh is heir to.

"My dear girl," she would call over her shoulder to Jane, "I know this is

awfully tiresome to you, and it must be very painful to see your old

friend suffering so; but if you will just wait patiently for ten or

fifteen minutes more--"

"Oh, don't mind me," Jane would respond, outwardly bored, but inwardly

interested. "I'm getting along all right. Go on enjoying your sufferings

as long as you please." And after a few of these forenoons Jane had

realized her own imperfections, and had learned the means of getting

round them.

Then Mrs. Bates would convey her unconscious pupil to the hair-dresser's.

She would abandon her gray tresses to the manipulations of operatives

skilled to show the possibilities of the natural material and the magical

supplementary powers of the unnatural; every frown occasioned by a tug,

every tear produced by a tangle, was borne cheerfully for the sake of an

ultimate good, and Jane acquired indirectly a complete knowledge of

all those preparations and processes which her preceptress felt her needs

required.

"Yes, my hair _is_ thinning on the forehead," Mrs. Bates would admit. "If

you should happen to have the precise match...."

The match was always difficult, but Jane did not fail to observe how easy

the same would be for herself.

Then Mrs. Bates would have her manicure at the house twice as often as

before, to increase the chance of her being on hand some morning when

Jane should drop in. "Try it yourself--just to see what it's like," she

would suggest; and her own plump and shapely hands would yield their

place on the small red velvet cushion to the long and graceless fingers

of her protégée. And presently the other processes--the soakings, the

washings, the rubbings--would follow.

She also recommended exercise--dumb-bells, for example.

"What's the matter with fencing?" asked Jane. "Truesdale, you know; he's

awfully good to me." She might have found it difficult to cite any

definite example of Truesdale's goodness; perhaps she meant merely that

he never snubbed her, never hectored her.

"Better yet. Fencing by all means."

Jane, moreover, always accompanied Mrs. Bates to the milliner's and to

the dress-maker's. They priced things, debated things, and tried on

things--on themselves, on each other, on the attendants. Mrs. Bates

purchased lavishly for herself, and suggested lavishly in regard to

purchases by Jane.

"You'd better have this," she would say. "It becomes you first-rate--you

won't find anything nicer."

"But the price!" Jane would demur. For Mrs. Bates frequented the most

expensive places, and spent money with a prodigal recklessness. "I can't;

it isn't right; I couldn't think of costing poor pa so much--especially

with Rosy and everything making such an expense for him."

"Nonsense. You're entitled to some of the good things of life, too. Your

father can stand it, I should hope. If he hasn't learned how to spend

money, it's high time he did. Have you any idea, you poor, simple soul,

what's he worth?"

"I suppose he is pretty well off," Jane would acknowledge, reluctantly,

indefinitely.

"Well off? I should say so! You ought to have twenty times what you do.

Let them send this home for you--I'll take the risk."

Thus in the course of a month or two Jane, to the bewilderment and

surprise of her mother and sisters and everybody else, became more

presentable than ever before in the whole course of her life. She fully

merited, in fact, the sincere encomium finally bestowed by Mrs. Bates

herself:

"There, now! You're not the worst-looking girl in this town--not by a

jugful!"

Jane was seriously affected by this unstinted praise, and she was almost

overwhelmed when her monitress showed the courage of her convictions by

offering a place in her box.

"Oh-h-h!" she mimicked, after Jane. "What does that mean? Will you or

won't you?"

"If I only could," said Jane; "it's the first thing of any account I've

had a chance at since I don't know when. But I've got another engagement

for that evening. I'm going to the university extension lecture with--I'm

going to the university extension lecture; it's my regular night." She

ended with a heavy downward inflection which she hoped was pronounced

enough to conceal the tell-tale dislocation that had preceded it.

"Indeed? Where does your lecture carry you?"

"Over on the West side--to that Settlement."

"Um. Bad neighborhood to be going into alone, at night."

"I'm not going alone," returned Jane, with a kind of fluttering

joyfulness.

"Oh! with some girl friends, then? Not much better--that way."

"I'm not going with any girl friends"--this accompanied by a perceptible

palpitation of delight. She looked at Mrs. Bates with eyes that seemed to

say, "Please go on; don't stop right there."

"Oh, then, that kind, good brother, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Bates--going

on.

"No, not that kind, good brother." Jane's face was fairly beaming.

"Some other kind, good young man, then."

"Yes," responded Jane, with a challenging light on her countenance; "some

other kind, good young man."

"Ah! And when does your lecture end?"

"At nine."

"Before the other thing begins. Of course the lecture is much too

instructive to lose, and then there's the fascination of a mile or two in

a dirty street-car; but couldn't you look in on us between ten and

half-past? The box is small, but I have a great fondness for those kind,

good young men. Couldn't you induce one of them--any one at all, of

course--to bring you, if he knew there was a place waiting for you both?"

"The gentleman who is going to escort me," began Jane, rising suddenly to

a very formal tone, "is--well, in fact, he--he doesn't go out very much,"

she proceeded, lapsing back into her former manner. "He's kind of quiet

and retiring. I don't believe he'd ever go to anything like this."

"Not when he's got a good place offered him--and a nice girl to take,

with a brand-new dress of just the right sort to go in? I should want a

beau of mine to have a little more spunk than that."

"How can you talk that way?" whimpered Jane, quite quivering with

pleasure. "I can't sit here and listen to anything like that. What

right"--with a feint of maiden indignation--"what right have you to say

that Mr. Br--that anybody is--is my--"

"Beau," supplied Mrs. Bates, serenely. "Beau--that's what I said.

Old-fashioned word, I know; but I can't think of a better one."

"You're just dreadful; you are," stammered Jane, trying to withdraw as

best she might from too pronounced an attitude of protest. She fingered

the length of ravelled bordering that drooped from the hair-cloth cushion

of her chair and ran an eye, pretendedly speculative, up and down the

pink and green stripes of Mrs. Bates's wall-paper.

"I'm pretty sure he wouldn't go--the gentleman who is to escort me to the

lecture," she said, with another return to her vain paraphrase. "He's

earnest. He's serious. Besides, he hasn't got a dress-coat."

"Hasn't got a dress-coat?"

"He doesn't approve of them. He thinks they're ugly and foolish and--and

not right. He believes that society is--well, not exactly wrong, but--"

"All the same," declared Mrs. Bates, "he will receive a ticket, and I

shall contrive to let him know that there's a place waiting for him."

"Oh, no! No, you mustn't! What would he ever think of me?"

"I shall, too."

"No! Don't--please don't. He wouldn't know what to think. He might think

that I--"

"I shall, too!" repeated Mrs. Bates, more loudly and stubbornly. "I

shall, too!" She knew that anything less marked than this would be a

chilling disappointment to the girl before her. "And if he hasn't got a

dress-coat, why, he can just get one. I'm sure if a young man cared

anything for me--"

"Oh, don't talk that way--please don't!" implored Jane, half hiding her

face with a kind of despairing joy. "Don't say such things, I beg of

you!"

"--I should expect him to make some little sacrifice for me," Mrs. Bates

completed. "Let him come and look at us; we may not be half so bad as he

imagines."

"Sacrifice." What a delightful and comforting sound the word had to Jane.

It vitalized in a moment all her story-reading of the past ten years.

That anybody should ever be moved to make a sacrifice for _her_!

"But he used to live in the Settlement," persisted Jane; "he used to work

there. He doesn't approve of Charity Balls; he thinks that isn't at all

the way to do things."

"Well," said Mrs. Bates, thoughtfully, "it's _a_ way; but there are

better ones, no doubt. Come, cut that lecture altogether. He could pick

up more in half an hour with me there at his elbow than he could learn in

half a dozen courses of lectures, however extended they were."

"And have you act as you acted at Rosy's afternoon? You'd paralyze us

both." Jane blushed at her "both."

"Oh, that's only my little way," returned Mrs. Bates, laughing. "You'd

_both_ understand." Jane blushed again. "A way," she repeated; "but there

are better ones, no doubt." And she laughed once more.

X

Bingham half folded the newspaper, and laid it again on Marshall's desk.

Then he settled his large, long figure back in Marshall's other chair,

and placed a broad finger or two upon each of its curved and varnished

arms.

"Yes," he observed, slowly, with a smile in the direction of the old man,

"the younger generation are holding up their end."

"So it seems," said Marshall, in return, while he scanned the other's

face closely to see what his precise meaning might be. Bingham's remark

had been uttered with an even intonation; it was difficult to determine

whether, after all, he had emphasized "younger" more than "generation,"

or "their" more than "end," or, indeed, whether he had given an undue

stress to either.

"Yes," the old man repeated. He made another reference to the newspaper.

"Yes; that is my child."

He fixed an eye, half fascinated, half protesting, upon a large cut which

was set to fill the width of two columns. It was a portrait of Rosy--of

"Miss Rosamund Marshall," as it read--with a line or two more, vaguely

biographical in character, in italics, beneath. It was engraved with more

than the usual care, and printed with more than the usual success.

This was the first time that any woman of his family had ever been

exposed in the public prints. "And here are five or six lines telling how

she was dressed. Is that right, Bingham?"

"Well, I'm no hand at describing. I suppose it reads correctly enough. At

any rate, Rosamund was the handsomest girl there, and the best

dressed--so several said--and the one who drew the most attention."

"Is that right, Bingham?" the old man repeated. He was accustomed enough

to the public presentation of other men's daughters, but this was the

first time that such a thing had befallen one of his own.

"Oh," replied Bingham; "you mean _that_ way. Well, times change. Ten

years ago this would have brought a protest, and twenty a flogging. And

we change with them. However, if this is the Miss Rosamund Marshall who

has begun lately to figure at teas and receptions and cotillons, and

always contrives to be the bright particular--Is it?"

Marshall smiled slowly. All this was true enough, and he could not

profess himself completely displeased. He nodded.

"Well, then, you'll have to stand it; you can't avoid it; it can't be

helped. And there's one more thing, too."

"What?"

"There was a young man present on this same occasion," Bingham proceeded;

"a decorative, diffusive young man--with a badge. Richard Truesdale

Marshall--was that his name? Any son of yours?"

Marshall nodded again, but his smile was distinctly less complacent.

"I am beginning to meet his name in print quite frequently," pursued

Bingham, serenely. "Is he the same Truesdale Marshall who has a

collection of water-colors in the current exhibition at the Art

Institute?"

"I believe so," responded the old man, with some lack of warmth.

"Is it the same Truesdale Marshall who sang last Friday at the residence

of Mrs. Granger S. Bates, for the benefit of--of--"

David Marshall smiled broadly. "Our Jennie--what a girl she is coming to

be! That Lunch Club is one of her pet notions; she pushes it at all

times--in season and out."

"She seems to be pushing it to good purpose just now," commented Bingham.

"By-the-way, I suppose she is the same Miss Marshall I danced with last

night. She sat in one of the upper places, so to speak, but she was

induced to go down on the floor for a few minutes."

"Well, Bingham," said Marshall, "I knew you went to that sort of thing

once in a while, and I thought that that in itself was a good deal for a

man like you; but for you to dance there--I shouldn't have imagined your

doing it; well, no."

"I didn't but once," responded the other, apologetically. "Still, if

you're going to get along in this world, you've got to be of it. Besides,

I thought"--_argumentum ad hominem_--"that she was entitled to show that

dress; hers was described, too."

"Um!" said her father, soberly, with a sidelong glance towards his

pigeon-holes. "But no picture."

"Well, let that pass," responded Bingham, with a slight touch of pique.

"Is this the Miss Marshall who read lately at the Fortnightly?"

"Yes."

"Is it the same one who is announced to lecture at Hull House on the

Russian novelists?"

"See here, Bingham!" The old man wheeled about sharply in his chair, and

fastened a keen scrutiny upon the other's face. Bingham had never talked

to him like this before; he had never seemed so light-minded, so slanted

towards the jocular. "See here, Bingham, what are you driving at?"

Bingham fitted himself solidly into the curved back of the chair, and

laid his hands out ponderously upon its arms. He had something to say,

and he wondered how best he might say it. "Marshall is twenty years older

than I am," he thought, as his eye traversed the shelves of nutmegs and

orris-root and lit upon the discolored awnings over the way, "and I must

be careful. I'm young to him, of course; but I can't ask the indulgence

due to a boy. How shall I work it?"

He felt that he had earned the right to speak. He had done well by

Marshall, and he knew that Marshall was pleased. It was more as a

personal favor than anything else that he had undertaken the work upon

the warehouse; he had put it through more promptly than anybody else

could have done, and with less interruption to the course of trade than

either of the firm would have imagined possible. For the past month the

business had been comfortably accommodated in its enlarged quarters,

and the two new floors were already habituated to the occult processes

which competition and a minutely graded scale of prices impose upon even

the most righteous of the trade. It is but fair to say, however, that

Marshall & Belden always saw that their sugar was as saccharine as a

specified price would permit, and that their coffee-roasters met the

lowered standard of cheap purchasers as well as the apparatus of any

rival did.

Yes, everything was running smoothly, and Bingham felt that he might

venture a slight trespass upon the friendliness and tolerance of his last

client.

He looked at Marshall for a moment with a slow and cautious smile. "Yes,

the young people are holding up their end; but how about the 'old man'

himself?"

"Oh, that's it!" thought Marshall. He made an instant and intuitive

application of this remark. He _was_ declining towards the horizon; he

_was_ shining but dimly compared with the twinkling of his attendant

satellites.

"Well, the 'old man' isn't altogether useless by a long shot. The young

people dance--and the old people furnish the platform. See here, Bingham.

I don't have to go to the papers to learn what my daughters wear to

parties; I've got my own papers here right within easy reach." He

contracted his brows as his eyes turned towards the pigeon-holes. "A

better account, too, than the newspaper one--fuller, exacter, more

detailed, backed up by figures--down three long sheets and half-way down

a fourth. And I don't need to go to art-galleries to understand what

opportunities my son has had to learn to paint; the foreign exchange man

at our bank could tell me all about that. And I don't have to go to

concerts, either, when I want to make my contribution to a benevolent

object: I can sit right in this room and draw checks, and be told just

how much to draw them for, too. Yes, Bingham, there are a great many ways

for an old fellow like me to make himself useful, and I am not allowed

to overlook any of them."

Marshall's tone and expression during this exposition had wavered back

and forth between jest and protest. But his eyes wandered towards those

pigeon-holes again, and his mien and accents drew on a shade of distinct

melancholy.

These receptacles contained other bills than those of the dress-makers.

There was one, for example, from a carriage-maker, and another from a

horse-dealer. For Rosamund, at the very outset of her career, had set her

face against old Mabel and the carry-all. She declined to appear in any

such fashion among the landaus and broughams of her newly-chosen

associates. She represented, furthermore, that it was extremely awkward

to depend upon the equipages of friends; and she protested that it was

far beneath their dignity to hire a conveyance from a livery-stable. Her

father had succumbed. Along with the bills for the new carriage and pair

were bills for a coachman's hat and cape-coat. Besides these, there was

the first month's statement of board for Mabel and storage for the

carry-all--both having been crowded out of the cramped stable to another

across the alley.

"Yes," resumed Bingham, availing himself of Marshall's own figure, "the

young people are dancing--though no more briskly than they should; but

why may not the old people dance, too? When the young ones are making

their youth and their beauty and their cleverness tell as they do, may

they not _expect_ the old ones to come forward as well? Aren't there

times when they should do it in mere justice to themselves? After your

children have led so many more germans and adorned so many more

receptions and founded so many more clubs and really worked their way

into the life of the town, they may look to their father to put himself

in evidence also. One of them, I can swear, is already a little jealous

on your account."

"Jane? Oh yes; she is always trying to make her poor old father toe the

mark."

"She has plans for you--ambitions for you. If you meet the expectations

that the future is likely to develop, you will be carrying through a

pretty big contract. I was surprised, myself, to learn how many diverse

opportunities this town offers--enough to extend through three dances.

People may preside at banquets, I learned, and address political

meetings, and head subscription papers, and found public baths, and build

and endow colleges. And there are others who donate telescopes, or erect

model lodging-houses, or set up statues and fountains, or

give--Marshall," he said, suddenly, "do something for yourself and for

the town; nothing that you are doing here"--he waved his hand towards the

larger office outside--"is enough for a man of your means and standing."

Bingham was now speaking with increased confidence and with greater

seriousness. He felt himself entitled to say these things by reason of

their personal relations and by virtue of his own standing before the

public. He was twenty years younger than Marshall, but he was twenty

times as great a figure in the public eye. He had had no mean share in

those two fast and crowded years through which the city had striven

towards readiness for the coming of the world. Like the Christians

at Ephesus, he, too, had "fought with the wild beasts"--with time, with

the elements, with Labor, with National niggardliness, with a

hundred-headed management; and he had expanded and ripened in the

struggle. He saw the world with a wider vision; he inhaled the vast and

palpitating present with a deeper breath. He beheld, too, a triumphant

and wide-spreading future, and he felt with the utmost keenness the

opportunities that the town offered even to the older and departing

generation--crabbed and reluctant though it be.

Marshall listened to his remarks and indicated an unremitted attention by

bowing now and then with a subdued gravity. The strain seemed familiar;

where had he heard it before? Why, from Susan Bates, to be sure--and in

this very place: strophe and antistrophe. Could it be possible that he

was so remiss towards himself and towards the community? Could it be true

that he was doing himself such scant and graceless justice? What answer

had he to make to this new advocate? The old one--with additions.

"I have been thinking about these matters. I have been considering the

public that so much is asked for. It is not the old public I used to know

twenty years ago--it has changed a good deal. It is better organized

against us--a banding together of petty officials with their whole

contemptible following: steerage-rats that have left their noisome holds

to swarm into our houses, over them, through them, everywhere--between

the floors, behind the wainscoting--everywhere. Do you know anything

about cheap law?"

"Justice courts? Don't let's go into that," said Bingham, quickly.

"I _am_ in that," retorted Marshall, angrily. His blue eyes took on an

unwonted gleam. "And I shall stay in until I have satisfied myself."

"Drop it," said Bingham. "It's a terrible thing--rotten, deplorable, an

out-and-out curse."

"I will not," returned Marshall. He struck his thin old hand on the edge

of his desk. "I'll see it through. They live within two blocks of my

house. Her son is an alderman; her nephew is a bailiff; two or three

others of them keep saloons. They are Poles, or Bohemians, or

Jews--Heaven knows what. They do business on the premises--they stick to

their burrow. Yet we couldn't get a summons served by a constable. And

when we finally got the matter before a court--it was continued. No

defendants there--only a filthy little creature who called himself

their attorney. We were never so blackguarded in our lives. Then another

continuance; and a third. Roger, poor boy, makes no headway at all. He

knows the law; he has a good practice; he leases and collects for me--and

buys and sells. But he is getting to be almost ashamed to come here to

see me about it."

"I know," assented Bingham; "a kind of _camorra_. Get a shyster; fight

the devil with fire. What can a gentleman do in a justice's court? If the

rats are behind the wainscot, don't stick your own hand into the hole.

Hire somebody else."

"I won't!" cried the old man, stubbornly. "I want to see for myself how

things actually are. I want to learn what conditions we are living under.

I want to understand the things that are really going on about us. I want

to see what a good citizen and a tax-payer can count upon by way of

redress." He picked at his petty grievance as a child torments a sore.

Yet a sore, in justice, may mean little, or it may mean much. Any

physician will tell you that.

"Drop it," counselled Bingham again. "It will irritate you and exasperate

you out of all proportion to its importance. And if you have been wronged

in a lower court, remember that many poorer men have been wronged in

higher ones. Come; keep your head clear and your temper calm, and save

them for important things."

The door of the little office opened softly, and one of the important

things began. The door had opened none too widely, yet sufficiently for

the entrance of the thin edge of a wedge--a wedge that was to gain a

tyrannizing force with each inch of advance, as is the wont.

To Bingham it seemed like another of those rats--one that had left the

wainscoting and taken to the floor, regardless (in a boldness at once

insolent and sly) of the presence of humankind. To Marshall it was only

an office-hand from the outer room who now entered with a handful of mail

matter, which he placed, with an air not wholly guiltless of servility

and stealth, upon his employer's desk.

He was a dark man of forty-five, with a black beard and a pair of narrow

eyes. He looked neither of the two occupants of the room full in the

face. His glance was searching and sidelong rather, not so much from the

presence of anything to spy upon as from habit and instinct. One fancied

a man too accustomed to the heavy foot of superiors to decline willingly

any minor advantage that came his way--or any major one.