One agreeable afternoon in late autumn two young men stood together on
Canal Street, closing a conversation that had evidently begun within
the club-house which they had just quitted.
"There's big money in it, Offdean," said the elder of the two. "I would
n't have you touch it if there was n't. Why, they tell me Patchly 's
pulled a hundred thousand out of the concern a'ready."
"That may be," replied Offdean, who had been politely attentive to the
words addressed to him, but whose face bore a look indicating that he
was closed to conviction. He leaned back upon the clumsy stick which
he carried, and continued: "It's all true, I dare say, Fitch; but a
decision of that sort would mean more to me than you'd believe if I
were to tell you. The beggarly twenty-five thousand's all I have, and
I want to sleep with it under my pillow a couple of months at least
before I drop it into a slot."
"You 'll drop it into Harding & Offdean's mill to grind out the pitiful
two and a half per cent commission racket; that 's what you 'll do in
the end, old fellow--see if you don't."
"Perhaps I shall; but it's more than likely I shan't. We 'll talk
about it when I get back. You know I'm off to north Louisiana in the
morning"--
"No! What the deuce"--
"Oh, business of the firm."
"Write me from Shreveport, then; or wherever it is."
"Not so far as that. But don't expect to hear from me till you see me.
I can't say when that will be."
Then they shook hands and parted. The rather portly Fitch boarded
a Prytania Street car, and Mr. Wallace Offdean hurried to the bank
in order to replenish his portemonnaie, which had been materially
lightened at the club through the medium of unpropitious jack-pots and
bobtail flushes.
He was a sure-footed fellow, this young Offdean, despite an occasional
fall in slippery places. What he wanted, now that he had reached his
twenty-sixth year and his inheritance, was to get his feet well planted
on solid ground, and to keep his head cool and clear.
With his early youth he had had certain shadowy intentions of shaping
his life on intellectual lines. That is, he wanted to; and he meant
to use his faculties intelligently, which means more than is at once
apparent. Above all, he would keep clear of the maelstroms of sordid
work and senseless pleasure in which the average American business man
may be said alternately to exist, and which reduce him, naturally, to a
rather ragged condition of soul.
Offdean had done, in a temperate way, the usual things which young men
do who happen to belong to good society, and are possessed of moderate
means and healthy instincts. He had gone to college, had traveled a
little at home and abroad, had frequented society and the clubs, and
had worked in his uncle's commission-house; in all of which employments
he had expended much time and a modicum of energy.
But he felt all through that he was simply in a preliminary stage
of being, one that would develop later into something tangible and
intelligent, as he liked to tell himself. With his patrimony of
twenty-five thousand dollars came what he felt to be the turning-point
in his life,--the time when it behooved him to choose a course, and to
get himself into proper trim to follow it manfully and consistently.
When Messrs. Harding & Offdean determined to have some one look after
what they called "a troublesome piece of land on Red River," Wallace
Offdean requested to be intrusted with that special commission of
land-inspector.
A shadowy, ill-defined piece of land in an unfamiliar part of his
native State, might, he hoped, prove a sort of closet into which he
could retire and take counsel with his inner and better self.