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Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

by Francis Hopkinson Smith · English · Gutenberg #4516 · 690,907 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith


        
Release date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4516]
                Most recently updated: March 21, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER: A NOVEL OF WHICH HE IS NOT THE HERO ***




Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team






PETER

A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

By F. Hopkinson Smith




CHAPTER I


Peter was still poring over his ledger one dark afternoon in December,
his bald head glistening like a huge ostrich egg under the flare of the
overhead gas jets, when Patrick, the night watchman, catching sight of
my face peering through the outer grating, opened the door of the Bank.

The sight so late in the day was an unusual one, for in all the years
that I have called at the Bank--ten, now--no, eleven since we first knew
each other--Peter had seldom failed to be ready for our walk uptown when
the old moon-faced clock high up on the wall above the stove pointed at
four.

“I thought there was something up!” I cried. “What is it, Peter--balance
wrong?”

He did not answer, only waved his hand in reply, his bushy gray eyebrows
moving slowly, like two shutters that opened and closed, as he scanned
the lines of figures up and down, his long pen gripped tight between his
thin, straight lips, as a dog carries a bone.

I never interrupt him when his brain is nosing about like this; it is
better to keep still and let him ferret it out. So I sat down outside
the curved rail with its wooden slats backed by faded green curtains,
close to the big stove screened off at the end of the long room, fixed
one eye on the moon-face and the other on the ostrich egg, and waited.

There are no such banks at the present time--were no others then, and
this story begins not so very many years ago--A queer, out-of-date,
mouldy old barn of a bank, you would say, this Exeter--for an
institution wielding its influence. Not a coat of paint for half a
century; not a brushful of whitewash for goodness knows how much longer.
As for the floor, it still showed the gullies and grooves, with here
and there a sturdy knot sticking up like a nut on a boiler, marking the
track of countless impatient depositors and countless anxious borrowers,
it may be, who had lock-stepped one behind the other for fifty years
or more, in their journey from the outer door to the windows where the
Peters of the old days, and the Peter of the present, presided over the
funds entrusted to their care.

Well enough in its day, you might have said, with a shrug, as you looked
over its forlorn interior. Well enough in its day! Why, man, old John
Astor, James Beekman, Rhinelander Stewart, Moses Grinnell, and a lot of
just such worthies--men whose word was as good as their notes--and
whose notes were often better than the Government's, presided over its
destinies, and helped to stuff the old-fashioned vault with wads of
gilt-edged securities--millions in value if you did but know it--and
making it what it is to-day. If you don't believe the first part of my
statement, you've only to fumble among the heap of dusty ledgers piled
on top of the dusty shelves; and if you doubt the latter part, then try
to buy some of the stock and see what you have to pay for it. Although
the gas was turned off in the directors' room, I could still see
from where I sat the very mahogany table under which these same
ruffle-shirted, watch-fobbed, snuff-taking old fellows tucked their
legs when they decided on who should and who should not share the bank's
confidence.

And the side walls and surroundings were none the less shabby and quite
as dilapidated. Even the windows had long since given up the fight
to maintain a decent amount of light, and as for the grated opening
protected by iron shutters which would have had barely room to swing
themselves clear of the building next door, no Patrick past or present
had ever dared loosen their bolts for a peep even an inch wide into the
canyon below, so gruesome was the collection of old shoes, tin cans,
broken bottles and battered hats which successive generations had
hurried into the narrow un-get-at-able space that lay between the two
structures.

Indeed the only thing inside or out of this time-worn building which the
most fertile of imaginations could consider as being at all up to date
was the clock. Not its face--that was old-timey enough with its sun,
moon and stars in blue and gold, and the name of the Liverpool maker
engraved on its enamel; nor its hands, fiddle-shaped and stiff, nor
its case, which always reminded me of a coffin set up on end awaiting
burial--but its strike. Whatever divergences the Exeter allowed itself
in its youth, or whatever latitude or longitude it had given its
depositors, and that, we may be sure, was precious little so long as
that Board of Directors was alive, there was no wabbling or wavering, no
being behind time, when the hour hand of the old clock reached three and
its note of warning rang out.

Peter obeyed the ominous sound and closed his Teller's window with a
gentle bang. Patrick took notice and swung to the iron grating of the
outer door. You might peer in and beg ever so hard--unless, of course,
you were a visitor like myself, and even then Peter would have to give
his consent--you might peer through, I say, or tap on the glass, or you
might plead that you were late and very sorry, but the ostrich egg never
turned in its nest nor did the eyebrows vibrate. Three o'clock was three
o'clock at the Exeter, and everybody might go to the devil--financially,
of course--before the rule would be broken. Other banks in panicky
times might keep a side door open until four, five or six--that is, the
bronze-rail, marble-top, glass-front, certify-your-checks-as-early-as-
ten-in-the-morning-without-a-penny-on-deposit kind of banks--but not the
Exeter--that is, not with Peter's consent--and Peter was the Exeter so
far as his department was concerned--and had been for nearly thirty
years--twenty as bookkeeper, five as paying teller and five as receiving
teller.

And the regularity and persistency of this clock! Not only did it
announce the hours, but it sounded the halves and quarters, clearing its
throat with a whirr like an admonitory cough before each utterance.
I had samples of its entire repertoire as I sat there:

One...two...three...four...five--then half an hour later a whir-r and a
single note. “Half-past five,” I said to myself. “Will Peter never find
that mistake?” Once during the long wait the night watchman shifted his
leg--he was on the other side of the stove--and once Peter reached up
above his head for a pile of papers, spreading them out before him under
the white glare of the overhead light, then silence again, broken only
by the slow, dogged tock-tick, tock-tick, or the sagging of a hot coal
adjusting itself for the night.

Suddenly a cheery voice rang out and Peter's hands shot up above his
head.

“Ah, Breen & Co.! One of those plaguey sevens for a nine. Here we are!
Oh, Peter Grayson, how often have I told you to be careful! Ah, what
a sorry block of wood you carry on your shoulders. I won't be a minute
now, Major.” A gratuitous compliment on the part of my friend, I being
a poor devil of a contractor without military aspirations of any kind.
“Well, well, how could I have been so stupid. Get ready to close up,
Patrick. No, thank you, Patrick, my coat's inside; I'll fetch it.”

He was quite another man now, closing the great ledger with a bang;
shouldering it as Moses did the Tables of the Law, and carrying it into
the big vault behind him--big enough to back a buggy into had the great
door been wider--shooting the bolts, whirring the combination into
so hopeless and confused a state that should even the most daring and
expert of burglars have tried his hand or his jimmy on its steel plating
he would have given up in despair (that is unless big Patrick fell
asleep--an unheard-of occurrence) and all with such spring and
joyousness of movement that had I not seen him like this many times
before I would have been deluded into the belief that the real Peter
had been locked up in the dismal vault with the musty books and that an
entirely different kind of Peter was skipping about outside.

But that was nothing to the air with which he swept his papers into the
drawer of his desk, brushed away the crumpled sheets upon which he
had figured his balance, and darted to the washstand behind the narrow
partition. Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped
off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets--quite a
disreputable-looking coat I must say--taking it by the nape of the neck,
as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it
upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt
sleeves and plunged his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands
into the basin, as if cleanliness were a thing to be welcomed as a
part of his life. These carefully dried, each finger by itself--not
forgetting the small seal ring on the little one--he gave an extra
polish to his glistening pate with the towel, patted his fresh,
smooth-shaven cheeks with an unrumpled handkerchief which he had
taken from his inside pocket, carefully adjusted his white neck-cloth,
refastening the diamond pin--a tiny one but clear as a baby's tear--put
on his frock-coat with its high collar and flaring tails, took down
his silk hat, gave it a flourish with his handkerchief, unhooked his
overcoat from a peg behind the door (a gray surtout cut something like
the first Napoleon's) and stepped out to where I sat.

You would never have put him down as being sixty years of age had you
known him as well as I did--and it is a great pity you didn't. Really,
now that I come to think of it, I never did put him down as being of any
age at all. Peter Grayson and age never seemed to have anything to do
with each other. Sometimes when I have looked in through the Receiving
Teller's window and have passed in my book--I kept my account at the
Exeter--and he has lifted his bushy shutters and gazed at me suddenly
with his merry Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line
of anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which
for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle older
than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the winds when I
met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street with that cheery lift
of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift that the occupants of every
office window on both sides of the street knew to be Peter's even when
they failed to recognize the surtout and straight-brimmed high hat. Had
any doubting Thomas, however, walked beside him on his way up Broadway
to his rooms on Fifteenth Street, and had the quick, almost boyish lift
of Peter's heels not entirely convinced the unbeliever of Peter's youth,
all questions would have been at once disposed of had the cheery bank
teller invited him into his apartment up three flights of stairs
over the tailor's shop--and he would have invited him had he been his
friend--and then and there forced him into an easy chair near the open
wood fire, with some such remark as: “Down, you rascal, and sit close
up where I can get my hands on you!” No--there was no trace of old age
about Peter.

He was ready now--hatted, coated and gloved--not a hint of the ostrich
egg or shaggy shutters visible, but a well-preserved bachelor of forty
or forty-five; strictly in the mode and of the mode, looking more like
some stray diplomat caught in the wiles of the Street, or some retired
magnate, than a modest bank clerk on three thousand a year. The next
instant he was tripping down the granite steps between the rusty iron
railings--on his toes most of the way; the same cheery spring in his
heels, slapping his thin, shapely legs with his tightly rolled umbrella,
adjusting his hat at the proper angle so that the well-trimmed side
whiskers--the veriest little dabs of whiskers hardly an inch long--would
show as well as the fringes of his grey hair.

Not that he was anxious to conceal these slight indications of advancing
years, nor did he have a spark of cheap personal vanity about him, but
because it was his nature always to put his best foot foremost and keep
it there; because, too, it behooved him in manner, dress and morals, to
maintain the standards he had set for himself, he being a Grayson, with
the best blood of the State in his veins, and with every table worth
dining at open to him from Fourteenth Street to Murray Hill, and beyond.

“Now, it's all behind me, my dear boy,” he cried, as we reached the
sidewalk and turned our faces up Wall Street toward Broadway. “Fifteen
hours to live my own life! No care until ten o'clock to-morrow.
Lovely life, my dear Major, when you think of it. Ah, old Micawber
was right--income one pound, expense one pound ten shillings; result,
misery: income one pound ten, expense one pound, outcome, happiness!
What a curse this Street is to those who abuse its power for good; half
of them trying to keep out of jail and the other half fighting to keep
out of the poor-house! And most of them get so little out of it. Just as
I can detect a counterfeit bill at sight, my boy, so can I put my finger
on these money-getters when the poison of money-getting for money's sake
begins to work in their veins. I don't mean the laying up of money for a
rainy day, or the providing for one's family. Every man should lay up a
six-months' doctor's bill, just as every man should lay up money enough
to keep his body out of Potter's Field. It's laying up the SURPLUS that
hurts.”

Peter had his arm firmly locked in mine now.

“Now that concern of Breen & Company, where I found my error, are no
better than the others. They are new to this whirlpool, but they will
soon get in over their heads. I think it is only the third or fourth
year since they started business, but they are already floating all
sorts of schemes, and some of them--if you will permit me in confidence,
strictly in confidence, my dear boy--are rather shady, I think: at least
I judge so from their deposits.”

“What are they, bankers?” I ventured. I had never heard of the firm; not
an extraordinary thing in my case when bankers were concerned.

Peter laughed:

“Yes, BANKERS--all in capital letters--the imitation kind. Breen
came from some place out of town and made a lucky hit in his first
year--mines or something--I forget what. Oh, but you must know that it
takes very little now-a-days to make a full-fledged banker. All you have
to do is to hoist in a safe--through the window, generally, with the
crowd looking on; rail off half the office; scatter some big ledgers
over two or three newly varnished desks; move in a dozen arm-chairs, get
a ticker, a black-board and a boy with a piece of chalk; be pleasant
to every fellow you meet with his own or somebody else's money in his
pocket, and there you are. But we won't talk of these things--it isn't
kind, and, really, I hardly know Breen, and I'm quite sure he wouldn't
know me if he saw me, and he's a very decent gentleman in many ways, I
hear. He never overdraws his account, any way--never tries--and that's
more than I can say for some of his neighbors.”

The fog, which earlier in the afternoon had been but a blue haze,
softening the hard outlines of the street, had now settled down in
earnest, choking up the doorways, wiping out the tops of the buildings,
their facades starred here and there with gas-jets, and making a smudged
drawing of the columns of the Custom House opposite.

“Superb, are they not?” said Peter, as he wheeled and stood looking at
the row of monoliths supporting the roof of the huge granite pile, each
column in relief against the dark shadows of the portico. “And they
are never so beautiful to me, my boy, as when the ugly parts of the old
building are lost in the fog. Follow the lines of these watchmen of the
temple! These grave, dignified, majestic columns standing out in the
gloom keeping guard! But it is only a question of time--down they'll
come! See if they don't!”

“They will never dare move them,” I protested. “It would be too great a
sacrilege.” The best way to get Peter properly started is never to agree
with him.

“Not move them! They will break them up for dock-filling before ten
years are out. They're in the way, my boy; they shut out the light;
can't hang signs on them; can't plaster them over with theatre bills; no
earthly use. 'Wall Street isn't Rome or any other excavated ruin; it's
the centre of the universe'--that's the way the fellows behind these
glass windows talk.” Here Peter pointed to the offices of some prominent
bankers, where other belated clerks were still at work under shaded
gas-jets. “These fellows don't want anything classic; they want
something that'll earn four per cent.”

We were now opposite the Sub-Treasury, its roof lost in the settling
fogs, the bronze figure of the Father of His Country dominating the
flight of marble steps and the adjacent streets.

Again Peter wheeled; this time he lifted his hat to the statue.

“Good evening, your Excellency,” he said in a voice mellowed to the same
respectful tone with which he would have addressed the original in the
flesh.

Suddenly he loosened his arm from mine and squared himself so he could
look into my face.

“I notice that you seldom salute him, Major, and it grieves me,” he said
with a grim smile.

I broke into a laugh. “Do you think he would feel hurt if I didn't.”

“Of course he would, and so should you. He wasn't put there for
ornament, my boy, but to be kept in mind, and I want to tell you that
there's no place in the world where his example is so much needed as
right here in Wall Street. Want of reverence, my dear boy”--here he
adjusted his umbrella to the hollow of his arm--“is our national sin.
Nobody reveres anything now-a-days. Much as you can do to keep people
from running railroads through your family vaults, and, as to one's
character, all a man needs to get himself battered black and blue, is to
try to be of some service to his country. Even our presidents have to
be murdered before we stop abusing them. By Jove! Major, you've GOT to
salute him! You're too fine a man to run to seed and lose your respect
for things worth while. I won't have it, I tell you! Off with your hat!”

I at once uncovered my head (the fog helped to conceal my own identity,
if it didn't Peter's) and stood for a brief instant in a respectful
attitude.

There was nothing new in the discussion. Sometimes I would laugh at him;
sometimes I would only touch my hat in unison; sometimes I let him
do the bowing alone, an act on his part which never attracted
attention--looking more as if he had accosted some passing friend.

We had reached Broadway by this time and were crossing the street
opposite Trinity Churchyard.

“Come over here with me,” he cried, “and let us look in through the iron
railings. The study of the dead is often more profitable than knowledge
of the living. Ah, the gate is open! It is not often I am here at this
time, and on a foggy afternoon. What a noble charity, my boy, is a
fog--it hides such a multitude of sins--bad architecture for one,” and
he laughed softly.

I always let Peter run on--in fact I always encourage him to run on. No
one I know talks quite in the same way; many with a larger experience
of life are more profound, but none have the personal note which
characterizes the old fellow's discussions.

“And how do you suppose these by-gones feel about what is going on
around them?” he rattled on, tapping the wet slab of a tomb with the end
of his umbrella. “And not only these sturdy patriots who lie here, but
the queer old ghosts who live in the steeple?” he added, waving his hand
upward to the slender spire, its cross lost in the fog. “Yes, ghosts and
goblins, my boy. You don't believe it?--I do--or I persuade myself I
do, which is better. Sometimes I can see them straddling the chimes when
they ring out the hours, or I catch them peeping out between the slats
of the windows away up near the cross. Very often in the hot afternoons
when you are stretching your lazy body under the tents of the mighty--”
 (Peter referred to some friends of mine who owned a villa down on Long
Island, and were good enough to ask me down for a week in August) “I
come up here out of the rush and sit on these old tombstones and talk
to these old fellows--both kinds--the steeple boys and the old cronies
under the sod. You never come, I know. You will when you're my age.”

I had it in my mind to tell him that the inside of a dry tent had some
advantages over the outside of a damp tomb, so far as entertaining one's
friends, even in hot weather, was concerned, but I was afraid it might
stop the flow of his thoughts, and checked myself.

“It is not so much the rest and quiet that delights me, as the feeling
that I am walled about for the moment and protected; jerked out of the
whirlpool, as it were, and given a breathing spell. On these afternoons
the old church becomes a church once more--not a gate to bar out the
rush of commercialism. See where she stands--quite out to the very curb,
her warning finger pointing upward. 'Thus far shalt thou come, and no
farther,' she cries out to the Four Per Cents. 'Hug up close to me, you
old fellows asleep in your graves; get under my lea. Let us fight it out
together, the living and the dead!' And now hear these abominable Four
Per Cents behind their glass windows: 'No place for a church,' they say.
'No place for the dead! Property too valuable. Move it up town. Move it
out in the country--move it any where so you get it out of our way. We
are the Great Amalgamated Crunch Company. Into our maw goes respect for
tradition, reverence for the dead, decency, love of religion, sentiment,
and beauty. These are back numbers. In their place, we give you
something real and up-to-date from basement to flagstaff, with fifty
applicants on the waiting list. If you don't believe it read our
prospectus!'”

Peter had straightened and was standing with his hand lifted above
his head, as if he were about to pronounce a benediction. Then he said
slowly, and with a note of sadness in his voice:

“Do you wonder, now, my boy, why I touch my hat to His Excellency?”



CHAPTER II


All the way up Broadway he kept up his good-natured tirade, railing at
the extravagance of the age, at the costly dinners, equipages, dress
of the women, until we reached the foot of the dilapidated flight of
brown-stone steps leading to the front door of his home on Fifteenth
Street. Here a flood of gas light from inside a shop in the basement
brought into view the figure of a short, squat, spectacled little man
bending over a cutting-table, a pair of shears in his hand.

“Isaac is still at work,” he cried. “If we were not so late we'd go in
and have a word with him. Now there's a man who has solved the problem,
my boy. Nobody will ever coax Isaac Cohen up to Fifth Avenue and into
a 'By appointment to His Majesty' kind of a tailor shop. Just pegs away
year after year--he was here long before I came--supporting his family,
storing his mind with all sorts of rare knowledge. Do you know he's one
of the most delightful men you will meet in a day's journey?”

“No--never knew anything of the kind. Thought he was just plain tailor.”

“And an intimate friend of many of the English actors who come over
here?” continued Peter.

“I never heard a word about it” I answered meekly; Peter's acquaintances
being too varied and too numerous for me to keep track of. That he
should have a tailor among them as learned and wise as Solomon, and with
friends all over the globe, was quite to be expected.

“Well, he is,” answered Peter. “They always hunt him up the first thing
they do. He lived in London for years and made their costumes. There's
no one, I assure you, I am more glad to see when he makes an excuse to
rap at my door. You'll come up, of course, until I read my letters.”

“No, I'll keep on to my rooms and meet you later at the club.”

“You'll do nothing of the kind, you restless mortal. You'll come
upstairs with me until I open my mail. It's really like touching the
spring of a Jack-in-the-box, this mail of mine--all sorts of things pop
out, generally the unexpected. Mighty interesting, I tell you,” and
with a cheery wave of the hand to his friend Isaac, whose eyes had been
looking streetward at the precise moment, Peter pushed me ahead of him
up the worn marble steps flanked by the rust-eaten iron railing which
led to the hallway and stairs, and so on up to his apartment.

It was just the sort of house Peter, of all men in the world, would have
picked out to live in--and he had been here for twenty years or more.
Not only did the estimable Isaac occupy the basement, but Madame
Montini, the dress-maker, had the first floor back; a real-estate agent
made free with the first floor front, and a very worthy teacher of
music, whose piano could be heard at all hours of the day, and far into
the night, was paying rent for the second, both front and back. Peter's
own apartments ran the whole length of the third floor, immediately
under the slanting, low-ceiled garret, which was inhabited by the good
Mrs. McGuffey, the janitress, who, in addition to her regular duties,
took especial care of Peter's rooms. Adjoining these was a small
apartment consisting of two rooms, connecting with Peter's suite by
a door cut through for some former lodger. These were also under
Mrs. McGuffey's special care and very good care did she take of them,
especially when Peter's sister, Miss Felicia Grayson, occupied them for
certain weeks in the year.

These changes had all taken place in the time the old fellow had mounted
the quaint stairs with the thin mahogany banisters, and yet Peter stayed
on. “The gnarled pear tree in the back yard is so charming,” he would
urge in excuse, “especially in the spring, when the perfume of its
blossoms fills the air,” or, “the view overlooking Union Square is so
delightful,” or, “the fireplace has such a good draught.” What mattered
it who lived next door, or below, or overhead, for that matter, so that
he was not disturbed--and he never was. The property, of course, had
gone from bad to worse since the owner had died; the neighborhood had
run down, and the better class of tenants down, up, and even across the
street--had moved away, but none of these things had troubled Peter.

And no wonder, when once you got inside the two rooms and looked about!

There was a four-post bedstead with chintz curtains draped about
the posts, that Martha Washington might have slept in, and a chintz
petticoat which reached the floor and hid its toes of rollers, which the
dear lady could have made with her own hands; there was a most ancient
mahogany bureau to match, all brass fittings. There were easy chairs
with restful arms within reach of tables holding lamps, ash receivers
and the like; and rows and rows of books on open shelves edged with
leather; not to mention engravings of distinguished men and old
portraits in heavy gilt frames: one of his grandfather who fought in the
Revolution, and another of his mother--this last by Rembrandt Peale--a
dear old lady with the face of a saint framed in a head of gray hair,
the whole surmounted by a cluster of silvery curls. There were quaint
brass candelabra with square marble bases on each end of the mantel,
holding candles showing burnt wicks in the day time and cheery lights at
night; and a red carpet covering both rooms and red table covers and
red damask curtains, and a lounge with a red afghan thrown over it; and
last, but by no means least--in fact it was the most important thing
in the sitting-room, so far as comfort was concerned--there was a big
open-hearth Franklin, full of blazing red logs, with brass andirons and
fender, and a draught of such marvellous suction that stray scraps of
paper, to say nothing of uncommonly large sparks, had been known
more than once to have been picked up in a jiffy and whirled into its
capacious throat.

Just the very background for dear old Peter, I always said, whenever
I watched him moving about the cheery interior, pushing up a chair,
lighting a fresh candle, or replacing a book on the shelf. What a
half-length the great Sully would have made of him, with his high
collar, white shirt-front and wonderful neck-cloth with its pleats and
counterpleats, to say nothing of his rosy cheeks and bald head, the
high light glistening on one of his big bumps of benevolence. And what a
background of deep reds and warm mahoganys with a glint of yellow brass
for contrast!

Indeed, I have often thought that not only Peter's love of red, but much
of Peter's quaintness of dress, had been suggested by some of the old
portraits which lined the walls of his sitting-room--his grandfather,
by Sully, among them; and I firmly believe, although I assure you I have
never mentioned it to any human being before, that had custom permitted
(the directors of his bank, perhaps), Peter would not only have indulged
in the high coat-collar and quaint neck-cloths of his fathers, but would
also have worn a dainty cue tied with a flowing black ribbon, always
supposing, of course, that his hair had held out, and, what is more
important, always supposing, that the wisp was long enough to hold on.

The one article, however, which, more than any other one thing in his
apartment, revealed his tastes and habits, was a long, wide, ample
mahogany desk, once the property of an ancestor, which stood under
the window in the front room. In this, ready to his hand, were drawers
little and big, full of miscellaneous papers and envelopes; pigeon-holes
crammed full of answered and unanswered notes, some with crests on them,
some with plain wax clinging to the flap of the broken envelopes; many
held together with the gum of the common world. Here, too, were bundles
of old letters tied with tape; piles of pamphlets, quaint trays holding
pens and pencils, and here too was always to be found, in summer or
in winter, a big vase full of roses or blossoms, or whatever was in
season--a luxury he never denied himself.

To this desk, then, Peter betook himself the moment he had hung his gray
surtout on its hook in the closet and disposed of his hat and umbrella.
This was his up-town office, really, and here his letters awaited him.

First came a notice of the next meeting of the Numismatic Society of
which he was an honored member; then a bill for his semi-annual dues at
the Century Club; next a delicately scented sheet inviting him to dine
with the Van Wormleys of Washington Square, to meet an English lord and
his lady, followed by a pressing letter to spend Sunday with friends
in the country. Then came a long letter from his sister, Miss Felicia
Grayson, who lived in the Genesee Valley and who came to New York every
winter for what she was pleased to call “The Season” (a very remarkable
old lady, this Miss Felicia Grayson, with a mind of her own, sections of
which she did not hesitate to ventilate when anybody crossed her or her
path, and of whom we shall hear more in these pages), together with the
usual assortment of bills and receipts, the whole an enlivening
record not only of Peter's daily life and range of taste, but of the
limitations of his purse as well.

One letter was reserved for the last. This he held in his hand until he
again ran his eye over the pile before him. It was from Holker Morris
the architect, a man who stood at the head of his profession.

“Yes, Holker's handwriting,” he said as he inserted the end of the paper
cutter. “I wonder what the dear fellow wants now?” Here he ran his eye
over the first page. “Listen, Major. What an extraordinary man... He's
going to give a dinner, he says, to his draughtsmen... in his offices
at the top of his new building, six stories up. Does the rascal think I
have nothing to do but crawl up his stairs? Here, I'll read it to you.”

“'You, dear Peter:' That's just like Holker! He begins that way when he
wants me to do something for him. 'No use saying you won't come, for I
shall be around for you at seven o'clock with a club--'No, that's not
it--he writes so badly--'with a cab.' Yes, that's it--'with a cab.' I
wonder if he can drive me up those six flights of stairs? 'There'll
be something to eat, and drink, and there will be fifty or more of my
draughtsmen and former employees. I'm going to give them a dinner and a
house-warming. Bring the Major if you see him. I have sent a note to his
room, but it may not reach him. No dress suit, remember. Some of my men
wouldn't know one if they saw it.”

As the letter dropped from Peter's hand a scraping of feet was heard at
the hall door, followed by a cheery word from Mrs. McGuffey--she had her
favorites among Peter's friends--and Holker Morris burst into the room.

“Ah, caught you both!” he cried, all out of breath with his run
upstairs, his hat still on his head. No one blew in and blew out
of Peter's room (literally so) with the breeze and dash of the
distinguished architect. “Into your coats, you two--we haven't a moment
to spare. You got my letter, of course,” he added, throwing back the
cape of his raincoat.

“Yes, Holker, just opened it!” cried Peter, holding out both hands to
his guest. “But I'm not going. I am too old for your young fellows--take
the Major and leave me behind.”

The architect grabbed Peter by the arm. “When did that mighty idea crack
its way through that shell of yours, you tottering Methusaleh! Old!
You're spryer than a frolicking lamb in March. You are coming, too,
Major. Get into your coats and things!”

“But Isaac is pressing my swallow-tail.”

“I don't mean your dress-coat, man--your OVERCOAT! Now I am sure you
didn't read my letter? Some of my young fellows haven't got such a
thing--too poor.”

“But look at YOURS!”

“Yes, I had to slip into mine out of respect to the occasion; my boys
wouldn't like it if I didn't. Sort of uniform to them, but they'd be
mighty uncomfortable if you wore yours. Hurry up, we haven't a minute to
lose.”

Peter had forced the architect into one of the big chairs by the fire
by this time, and stood bending over him, his hands resting on Morris's
broad shoulders.

“Take the Major with you, that's a good fellow, and let me drop in about
eleven o'clock,” he pleaded, an expression on his face seen only when
two men understand and love each other. “There's a letter from Felicia
to attend to; she writes she is coming down for a couple of weeks, and
then I've really had a devil of a day at the bank.”

“No, you old fraud, you can't wheedle me that way. I want you before
everybody sits down, so my young chaps can look you over. Why, Peter,
you're better than a whole course of lectures, and you mean something,
you beggar! I tell you” (here he lifted himself from the depths of the
chair and scrambled to his feet) “you've got to go if I have to tie
your hands and feet and carry you downstairs on my back! And you, too,
Major--both of you. Here's your overcoat--into it, you humbug!... the
other arm. Is this your hat? Out you go!” and before I had stopped
laughing--I had refused to crowd the cab--Morris had buttoned the
surtout over Peter's breast, crammed the straight-brimmed hat over his
eyes, and the two were clattering downstairs.



CHAPTER III



Long before the two had reached the top floor of the building in which
the dinner was to be given, they had caught the hum of the merrymakers,
the sound bringing a smile of satisfaction to Peter's face, but it was
when he entered the richly colored room itself, hazy with cigarette
smoke, and began to look into the faces of the guests grouped about him
and down the long table illumined by myriads of wax candles that all his
doubts and misgivings faded into thin air. Never since his school days,
he told me afterwards, had he seen so many boisterously happy young
fellows grouped together. And not only young fellows, with rosy
cheeks and bright eyes, but older men with thoughtful faces, who had
relinquished for a day the charge of some one of the important buildings
designed in the distinguished architect's office, and had spent the
night on the train that they might do honor to their Chief.

But it was when Morris, with his arm fast locked in his, began
introducing him right and left as the “Guest of Honor of the Evening,”
 the two shaking hands first with one and then another, Morris breaking
out into joyous salvos of welcome over some arrival from a distant city,
or greeting with marked kindness and courtesy one of the younger
men from his own office, that the old fellow's enthusiasm became
uncontrollable.

“Isn't it glorious, Holker!” he cried joyously, with uplifted hands.
“Oh, I'm so glad I came! I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the
world. Did you ever see anything like it? This is classic, my boy--it
has the tang and the spice of the ancients.”

Morris's greeting to me was none the less hearty, although he had left
me but half an hour before.

“Late, as I expected, Major,” he cried with out-stretched hand, “and
serves you right for not sitting in Peter's lap in the cab. Somebody
ought to sit on him once in a while. He's twenty years younger
already. Here, take this seat alongside of me where you can keep him
in order--they were at table when I entered. Waiter, bring back that
bottle--Just a light claret, Major--all we allow ourselves.”

As the evening wore away the charm of the room grew upon me. Vistas hazy
with tobacco smoke opened up; the ceiling lost in the fog gave one the
impression of out-of-doors--like a roof-garden at night; a delusion made
all the more real by the happy uproar. And then the touches here and
there by men whose life had been the study of color and effects; the
appointments of the table, the massing of flowers relieving the white
cloth; the placing of shaded candles, so that only a rosy glow filtered
through the room, softening the light on the happy faces--each scalp
crowned with chaplets of laurel tied with red ribbons: an enchantment
of color, form and light where but an hour before only the practical and
the commonplace had held sway.

No vestige of the business side of the offices remained. Peter pointed
out to me a big plaster model of the State House, which filled one end
of the room, and two great figures, original plaster casts, heroic in
size, that Harding, the sculptor, had modelled for either side of the
entrance of the building; but everything that smacked of T-square or
scale was hidden from sight. In their place, lining the walls, stood a
row of standards of red and orange silk, stretched on rods and supported
by poles; the same patterns of banners which were carried before
Imperial Caesars when they took an airing; and now emblazoned with the
titles of the several structures conceived in the brain of Holker Morris
and executed by his staff: the Imperial Library in Tokio; the great
Corn Exchange covering a city block; the superb Art Museum crowning
the highest hill in the Park; the beautiful chateau of the millionaire
surrounded by thousands of acres of virgin forest; the spacious
warehouses on the water front, and many others.

With the passing of the flagons an electric current of good fellowship
flashed around the circle. Stories that would have been received with
but a bare smile at the club were here greeted with shouts of laughter.
Bon-mots, skits, puns and squibs mouldy with age or threadbare with use,
were told with a new gusto and welcomed with delight.

Suddenly, and without any apparent reason, these burst forth a roar
like that of a great orchestra with every instrument played at its
loudest--rounds of applause from kettle-drums, trombones and big horns;
screams of laughter from piccolos, clarionettes and flutes, buzzings of
subdued talk by groups of bass viols and the lesser strings, the whole
broken by the ringing notes of a song that soared for an instant clear
of the din, only to be overtaken and drowned in the mighty shout of
approval. This was followed by a stampede from the table; the banners
were caught up with a mighty shout and carried around the room; Morris,
boy for the moment, springing to his feet and joining in the uproar.

The only guest who kept his chair, except Peter and myself, was a young
fellow two seats away, whose eyes, brilliant with excitement, followed
the merrymaking, but who seemed too much abashed, or too ill at ease,
to join in the fun. I had noticed how quiet he was and wondered at the
cause. Peter had also been watching the boy and had said to me that he
had a good face and was evidently from out of town.

“Why don't you get up?” Peter called to him at last. “Up with you, my
lad. This is one of the times when every one of you young fellows should
be on your feet.” He would have grabbed a banner himself had any one
given him the slightest encouragement.

“I would, sir, but I'm out of it,” said the young man with a deferential
bow, moving to the empty seat next to Peter. He too had been glancing at
Peter from time to time.

“Aren't you with Mr. Morris?”

“No, I wish I were. I came with my friend, Garry Minott, that young
fellow carrying the banner with 'Corn Exchange' marked on it.”

“And may I ask, then, what you do?” continued Peter.

The young fellow looked into the older man's kindly eyes--something in
their expression implied a wish to draw him the closer--and said quite
simply: “I don't do anything that is of any use, sir. Garry says that I
might as well work in a faro bank.”

Peter leaned forward. For the moment the hubbub was forgotten as
he scrutinized the young man, who seemed scarcely twenty-one, his
well-knit, well-dressed body, his soft brown hair curled about his
scalp, cleanly modelled ears, steady brown eyes, white teeth--especially
the mobile lips which seemed quivering from some suppressed emotion--all
telling of a boy delicately nurtured.

“And do you really work in a faro bank?” Peter's knowledge of human
nature had failed him for once.

“Oh, no sir, that is only one of Garry's jokes. I'm clerk in a stock
broker's office on Wall Street. Arthur Breen & Company. My uncle is head
of the firm.”

“Oh, that's it, is it?” answered Peter in a relieved tone.

“And now will you tell me what your business is, sir?” asked the young
man. “You seem so different from the others.”

“Me! Oh, I take care of the money your gamblers win,” replied Peter, at
which they both laughed, a spark of sympathy being kindled between them.

Then, seeing the puzzled expression on the boy's face, he added with
a smile: “I'm Receiving Teller in a bank, one of the oldest in Wall
Street.”

A look of relief passed over the young fellow's face.

“I'm very glad, sir,” he said, with a smile. “Do you know, sir, you look
something like my own father--what I can remember of him--that is, he
was--” The lad checked himself, fearing he might be discourteous. “That
is, he had lost his hair, sir, and he wore his cravats like you, too. I
have his portrait in my room.”

Peter leaned still closer to the speaker. This time he laid his hand on
his arm. The tumult around him made conversation almost impossible. “And
now tell me your name?”

“My name is Breen, sir. John Breen. I live with my uncle.”

The roar of the dinner now became so fast and furious that further
confidences were impossible. The banners had been replaced and every one
was reseated, talking or laughing. On one side raged a discussion as to
how far the decoration of a plain surface should go--“Roughing it,” some
of them called it. At the end of the table two men were wrangling as to
whether the upper or the lower half of a tall structure should have
its vertical lines broken; and, if so, by what. Further down high-keyed
voices were crying out against the abomination of the flat roof on the
more costly buildings; wondering whether some of their clients would
wake up to the necessity of breaking the sky-line with something less
ugly--even if it did cost a little more. Still a third group were in
shouts of laughter over a story told by one of the staff who had just
returned from an inspection trip west.

Young Breen looked down the length of the table, watched for a moment
a couple of draughtsmen who stood bowing and drinking to each other
in mock ceremony out of the quaint glasses filled from the borrowed
flagons, then glanced toward his friend Minott, just then the centre of
a cyclone that was stirring the group midway the table.

“Come over here, Garry,” he called, half rising to his feet to attract
his friend's attention.

Minott waved his hand in answer, waited until the point of the story had
been reached, and made his way toward Peter's end of the table.

“Garry,” he whispered, “I want to introduce you to Mr. Grayson--the very
dearest old gentleman you ever met in your whole life. Sits right next
to me.”

“What, that old fellow that looks like a billiard ball in a high
collar?” muttered Minott with a twinkle in his eye. “We've been
wondering where Mr. Morris dug him up.”

“Hush,” said Breen--“he'll hear you.”

“All right, but hurry up. I must say he doesn't look near so bad when
you get close to him.”

“Mr. Grayson, I want you to know my friend Garry Minott.”

Peter rose to his feet. “I DO know him,” he said, holding out his hand
cordially. “I've been knowing him all the evening. He's made most of
the fun at his end of the table. You seem to have flaunted your Corn
Exchange banner on the smallest provocation, Mr. Minott,” and Peter's
fingers gripped those of the young man.

“That's because I've been in charge of the inside work. Great dinner,
isn't it, Mr. Grayson. But it's Britton who has made the dinner. He's
more fun than a Harlem goat with a hoopskirt. See him--that's Brit with
a red head and blue neck-tie. He's been all winter in Wisconsin looking
after some iron work and has come back jam full of stories.” The dignity
of Peter's personality had evidently not impressed the young man,
judging from the careless tone with which he addressed him. “And how are
you getting on, Jack--glad you came, ar'n't you?” As he spoke he laid his
hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder. “Didn't I tell you it would
be a corker? Out of sight, isn't it? Everything is out of sight around
our office.” This last remark was directed to Peter in the same casual
way.

“I should say that every stopper was certainly out,” answered Peter
in graver tones. He detested slang and would never understand it. Then
again the bearing and air of Jack's friend jarred on him. “You know, of
course, the old couplet--'When the wine flows the--'”

“No, I don't know it,” interrupted Minott with an impatient glance. “I'm
not much on poetry--but you can bet your bottom dollar it's flowing all
right.” Then seeing the shade of disappointment on Breen's face at the
flippant way in which he had returned Peter's courtesies, but without
understanding the cause, he added, tightening his arm around his
friend's neck, “Brace up, Jack, old man, and let yourself go. That's
what I'm always telling Jack, Mr. Grayson. He's got to cut loose from
a lot of old-fashioned notions that he brought from home if he wants to
get anywhere around here. I had to.”

“What do you want him to give up, Mr. Minott?” Peter had put on his
glasses now, and was inspecting Garry at closer range.

“Oh, I don't know--just get into the swing of things and let her go.”

“That is no trouble for you to do,” rejoined Jack, looking into his
friend's face. “You're doing something that's worth while.”

“Well, aren't you doing something that's worth while? Why you'll be
a millionaire if you keep on. First thing you know the lightning will
strike you just as it did your uncle.”

Morris leaned forward at the moment and called Minott by name. Instantly
the young man's manner changed to one of respectful attention as he
stepped to his Chief's side.

“Yes, Mr. Morris.”

“You tell the men up your way to get ready to come to order, or we won't
get through in time--it's getting late.”

“All right, sir, I'll take care of 'em. Just as soon as you begin to
speak you won't hear a sound.”

As Minott moved from Morris's seat another and louder shout arose from
the other end of the table:

“Garry, Garry, hurry up!” came the cry. It was evident the young man was
very popular.

Peter dropped his glasses from his nose, and turning toward Morris said
in a low voice:

“That's a very breezy young man, Holker, the one who has just left us.
Got something in him, has he, besides noise?”

“Yes, considerable. Wants toning down once in a while, but there's no
question of his ability or of his loyalty. He never shirks a duty and
never forgets a kindness. Queer combination when you think of it, Peter.
What he will make of himself is another matter.”

Peter drew his body back and sent his thoughts out on an investigating
tour. He was wondering what effect the influence of a young man like
Minott would have on a young man like Breen.

The waiters at this point brought in huge trays holding bowls of tobacco
and long white clay pipes, followed by even larger trays bearing coffee
in little cups. Morris waited a moment and then rapped for order.
Instantly a hush fell upon the noisy room; plates and glasses were
pushed back so as to give the men elbow room; pipes were hurriedly
lighted, and each guest turned his chair so as to face the Chief, who
was now on his feet.

As he stood erect, one hand behind his back, the other stretched toward
the table in his appeal for silence, I thought for the hundredth time
how kind his fifty years had been to him; how tightly knit his figure;
how well his clothes became him. A handsome, well-groomed man at all
times and in any costume--but never so handsome or so well groomed as
in evening dress. Everything in his make-up helped: the broad, square
shoulders, arms held close to his side; flat waist; incurving back and
narrow hips. His well-modelled, aristocratic head, too, seemed to gain
increased distinction when it rose clear from a white shirt-front which
served as a kind of marble pedestal for his sculptured head. There
was, moreover, in his every move and look, that quality of transparent
sincerity which always won him friends at sight. “If men's faces are
clocks,” Peter always said, “Holker's is fitted with a glass dial. You
can not only see what time it is, but you can see the wheels that move
his heart.”

He was about to speak now, his eyes roaming the room waiting for the
last man to be still. No fumbling of glasses or rearranging of napkin,
but erect, with a certain fearless air that was as much a part of his
nature as was his genius. Beginning in a clear, distinct voice which
reached every ear in the room, he told them first how welcome they were.
How great an honor it was for him to have them so close to him--so close
that he could look into all their faces with one glance; not only those
who came from a distance but those of his personal staff, to whom really
the success of the year's work had been due. As for himself, he was, as
they knew, only the lead horse in the team, going ahead to show them
the way, while they did the effective pulling that brought the load to
market! Here he slipped his hand in his pocket, took from it a small box
which he laid beside his plate, and continued:

“At these festivals, as you know, and if my memory serves me this is our
third, it has always been our custom to give some slight token of our
appreciation to the man who has done most during the year to further the
work of the office. This has always been a difficult thing to decide,
because every one of you, without a single exception, has given the best
that is in you in the general result. Three years ago, you remember, it
was awarded to the man who by common consent had carried to completion,
and without a single error, the detailed drawings of the Museum which
was finished last year. I am looking at you, Mr. Downey, and again
congratulate you. Last year it was awarded to Mr. Buttrick for the
masterly way with which he put together the big arches of the Government
warehouses--a man whom it would have been my pleasure to congratulate
again to-night had it been possible for him to reach us. To-night I
think you will all agree with me that this small token, not only of my
own, but of your 'personal regard and appreciation'” (here he opened
the box and took from it a man's ring set with three jewels), “should
be given to the man who has carried out in so thorough a way the part
allotted to him in the Corn Exchange, and who is none other than Mr.
Garrison Minott, who for--”

The rest of the sentence was lost in the uproar.

“Garry! Garry! Garry Minott!” came from all parts of the room. “Bully
for Garry! You deserve it, old man! Three cheers for Garry Minott!
Hip... Hip...!”

Morris's voice now dominated the room.

“Come this way, Mr. Minott.”

The face of the young superintendent, which had been in a broad laugh
all the evening, grew white and red by turns. Out of pure astonishment
he could neither move nor speak.

“All right--stay where you are!” cried Morris laughing. “Pass it up to
him, please.”

John Breen sprang from his chair with the alertness of a man who had
been accustomed to follow his impulse. In his joy over his friend's
good fortune he forgot his embarrassment, forgot that he was a stranger;
forgot that he alone, perhaps, was the only young man in the room whose
life and training had not fitted him for the fullest enjoyment of
what was passing around him; forgot everything, in fact, but that his
comrade, his friend, his chum, had won the highest honors his Chief
could bestow.

With cheeks aflame he darted to Morris's chair.

“Let me hand it to him, sir,” he cried, all the love for his friend
in his eyes, seizing the ring and plunging toward Garry, the shouts
increasing as he neared his side and placed the prize in his hand. Only
then did Minott find his breath and his feet.

“Why, Mr. Morris!--Why, fellows!--Why, there's plenty of men in the
office who have done more than I have to--”

Then he sat down, the ring fast in his hand.

When the applause had subside--the young fellow's modesty had caused a
fresh outburst--Morris again rose in his chair and once more the room
grew still.

“Twelve o'clock, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Downey, you are always our
stand-by in starting the old hymn.”

The diners--host and guests alike--rose to their feet as one man. Then
to Peter's and my own intense surprise that most impressive of all
chants, the Doxology in long metre, surged out, gaining in volume and
strength as its strains were caught up by the different voices.

With the ending of the grand old hymn--it had been sung with every
mark of respect by every man in the room--John Breen walked back to his
chair, leaned toward Peter, and with an apologetic tone in his voice--he
had evidently noticed the unfavorable impression that Garry had made on
his neighbor--said:

“Don't misjudge Garry, Mr. Grayson; he's the kindest hearted fellow in
the world when you know him. He's a little rough sometimes, as you can
see, but he doesn't mean it. He thinks his way of talking and acting is
what he calls 'up-to-date.'” Then he added with a sigh: “I wish I had a
ring like that--one that I had earned. I tell you, Mr. Grayson, THAT'S
something worth while.”

Peter laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and looked him straight
in the face, the same look in his eyes that a proud father would have
given a son who had pleased him. He had heard with delight the boy's
defence of his friend and he had read the boy's mind as he sang the
words of the hymn, his face grave, his whole attitude one of devotion.
“You'd think he was in his father's pew at home,” Peter had whispered
to me with a smile. It was the latter outburst though--the one that came
with a sigh--that stirred him most.

“And you would really have liked a ring yourself, my lad?”

“Would I like it! Why, Mr. Grayson, I'd rather have had Mr. Morris give
me a thing like that and DESERVED IT, than have all the money you could
pile on this table.”

One of those sudden smiles which his friends loved so well irradiated
Peter's face.

“Keep on the way you're going, my son,” he said, seizing the boy's hand,
a slight tremble in his voice, “and you'll get a dozen of them.”

“How?” The boy's eyes were wide in wonderment.

“By being yourself. Don't let go of your ideals no matter what Minott
or anybody else says. Let him go his way and do you keep on in yours.
Don't... but I can't talk here. Come and see me. I mean it.”

Breen's eyes glistened. “When?”

“To-morrow night, at my rooms. Here's my card. And you, too, Mr.
Minott--glad to see both of you.” Garry has just joined them.

“Thanks awfully,” answered Minott. “I'm very sorry, Mr. Grayson, but I'm
booked for a supper at the Magnolia. Lot of the fellows want to whoop
up this--” and he held the finger bearing the ring within an inch of
Peter's nose. “And they want you, too, Jack.”

“No, please let me have him,” Peter urged. Minott, I could see, he did
not want; Breen he was determined to have.

“I would love to come, sir, and it's very kind of you to ask me. There's
to be a dance at my uncle's tomorrow night, though I reckon I can be
excused. Would you--would you come to see me instead? I want you to see
my father's portrait. It's not you, and yet it's like you when you turn
your head; and there are some other things. I'd like--” Here the boy
stopped.

Peter considered for a moment. Calling at the house of a man he did not
know, even to continue the acquaintance of so charming a young fellow
as his nephew, was not one of the things punctilious Mr.
Grayson--punctilious as to forms of etiquette--was accustomed to do. The
young man read his thoughts and added quickly:

“Of course I'll do just as you say, but if you only would come we will
be entirely alone and won't see anybody else in the house.”

“But couldn't you possibly come to me?” Peter urged. The fact that young
Breen had a suite of rooms so sequestered as to be beyond the reach
even of a dance, altered the situation to some extent, but he was still
undecided. “I live all alone when my sister is not with me, and I, too,
have many things I am sure would interest you. Say you'll come now--I
shall expect you, shall I not?”

The boy hesitated. “You may not know exactly what I mean,” he said
slowly. “Maybe you can't understand, for everybody about here seems to
love you, and you must have lots of friends. The fact is, I feel out of
everything. I get pretty lonely sometimes. Garry, here, never stays five
minutes when he comes to see me, so many people are after him all the
time. Please say you'll come!”

There was a note in the boy's voice that swept away all the older man's
scruples.

“Come, my son! Of course I'll come,” burst out Peter. “I'll be there at
nine o'clock.”

As Morris and the others passed between the table and the wall on
their way to the cloak-room, Minott, who had listened to the whole
conversation, waited until he thought Peter had gone ahead, and then,
with an impatient gesture, said:

“What the devil, Jack, do you want to waste your time over an old fellow
like that for?”

“Oh, Garry, don't--”

“Don't! A bald-headed old pill who ought to have--”

Then the two passed out of hearing.



CHAPTER IV



Breakfast--any meal for that matter--in the high-wainscoted,
dark-as-a-pocket dining-room of the successful Wall Street broker--the
senior member of the firm of A. Breen & Co., uncle, guardian and
employer of the fresh, rosy-cheeked lad who sat next to Peter on the
night of Morris's dinner, was never a joyous function.

The room itself, its light shut out by the adjoining extensions,
prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the scrap of a
yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and
so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his
master's guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and
who had never been known to crack a smile of any kind, long or short,
during his five years' sojourn with the family of Breen.

Not that anybody wanted Parkins to crack one, that is, not his master,
and certainly not his mistress, and most assuredly not his other
mistress, Miss Corinne, the daughter of the lady whom the successful
Wall Street broker had made his first and only wife.

All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better had
there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing away,
sputtering out its good morning as you entered--and there would have
been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon it--fought for it,
if necessary; or if in summer one could have seen through the curtained
windows a stretch of green grass with here and there a tree, or one
or two twisted vines craning their necks to find out what was going on
inside; or if in any or all seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny
wife looking like a bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind
the smoking coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar
would be enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of
affection, had thrown her arms around her father's neck and kissed him
because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her day
to begin that way:--if, I say, there had been all, or one-half, or
one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this sepulchral interior
might have been improved--but there wasn't.

There was a wife, of course, a woman two years older than Arthur
Breen--the relict of a Captain Barker, an army officer--who had spent
her early life in moving from one army post to another until she had
settled down in Washington, where Breen had married her, and where the
Scribe first met her. But this sharer of the fortunes of Breen preferred
her breakfast in bed, New York life having proved even more wearing than
military upheavals. And there was also a daughter, Miss Corinne Barker,
Captain and Mrs. Barker's only offspring, who had known nothing of army
posts, except as a child, but who had known everything of Washington
life from the time she was twelve until she was fifteen, and she was now
twenty; but that young woman, I regret to say, also breakfasted in bed,
where her maid had special instructions not to disturb her until my
lady's jewelled fingers touched a button within reach of her dainty
hand; whereupon another instalment of buttered rolls and coffee would be
served with such accessories of linen, porcelain and silver as befitted
the appetite and station of one so beautiful and so accomplished.

These conditions never ceased to depress Jack. Fresh from a life out
of doors, accustomed to an old-fashioned dining-room--the living room,
really, of the family who had cared for him since his father's death,
where not only the sun made free with the open doors and windows,
but the dogs and neighbors as well--the sober formality of this early
meal--all of his uncle's meals, for that matter--sent shivers down his
back that chilled him to the bone.

He had looked about him the first morning of his arrival, had noted the
heavy carved sideboard laden with the garish silver; had examined the
pictures lining the walls, separated from the dark background of leather
by heavy gold frames; had touched with his fingers the dial of the
solemn bronze clock, flanked by its equally solemn candelabra; had
peered between the steel andirons, bright as carving knives, and into
the freshly varnished, spacious chimney up which no dancing blaze had
ever whirled in madcap glee since the mason's trowel had left it and
never would to the end of time,--not as long as the steam heat held
out; had watched the crane-like step of Parkins as he moved about the
room--cold, immaculate, impassive; had listened to his “Yes, sir--thank
you, sir, very good, sir,” until he wanted to take him by the throat and
shake something spontaneous and human out of him, and as each cheerless
feature passed in review his spirits had sunk lower and lower.

This, then, was what he could expect as long as he lived under his
uncle's roof--a period of time which seemed to him must stretch out
into dim futurity. No laughing halloos from passing neighbors through
wide-open windows; no Aunt Hannahs running in with a plate of cakes
fresh from the griddle which would cool too quickly if she waited for
that slow-coach of a Tom to bring them to her young master. No sweep of
leaf-covered hills seen through bending branches laden with blossoms; no
stretch of sky or slant of sunshine; only a grim, funereal, artificial
formality, as ungenial and flattening to a boy of his tastes, education
and earlier environment as a State asylum's would have been to a red
Indian fresh from the prairie.

On the morning after Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of the
time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack
was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built
table--it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers--when
his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with
his--“Cream, sir,--yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir.”
 (Parkins had been second man with Lord Colchester, so he told Breen when
he hired him.) Jack had about made up his mind to order him out when
a peculiar tone in his uncle's “Good morning” made the boy scan that
gentleman's face and figure the closer.

His uncle was as well dressed as usual, looking as neat and as smart
in his dark cut-away coat with the invariable red carnation in his
buttonhole, but the boy's quick eye caught the marks of a certain wear
and tear in the face which neither his bath nor his valet had been able
to obliterate. The thin lips--thin for a man so fat, and which showed,
more than any other feature, something of the desultory firmness of his
character--drooped at the corners. The eyes were half their size,
the snap all out of them, the whites lost under the swollen lids. His
greeting, moreover, had lost its customary heartiness.

“You were out late, I hear,” he grumbled, dropping into his chair. “I
didn't get in myself until two o'clock and feel like a boiled owl.
May have caught a little cold, but I think it was that champagne of
Duckworth's; always gives me a headache. Don't put any sugar and cream
in that coffee, Parkins--want it straight.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the flunky, moving toward the sideboard.

“And now, Jack, what did you do?” he continued, picking up his napkin.
“You and Garry made a night of it, didn't you? Some kind of an artist's
bat, wasn't it?”

“No, sir; Mr. Morris gave a dinner to his clerks, and--”

“Who's Morris?”

“Why, the great architect.”

“Oh, that fellow! Yes, I know him, that is, I know who he is. Say the
rest. Parkins! didn't I tell you I didn't want any sugar or cream.”

Parkins hadn't offered any. He had only forgotten to remove them from
the tray.

Jack kept straight on; these differences between the master and Parkins
were of daily occurrence.

“And, Uncle Arthur, I met the most wonderful gentleman I ever saw; he
looked just as if he had stepped out of an old frame, and yet he is down
in the Street every day and--”

“What firm?”

“No firm, he is--”

“Curbstone man, then?” Here Breen lifted the cup to his lips and as
quickly put it down. “Parkins!”

“Yes, sir,” came the monotone.

“Why the devil can't I get my coffee hot?”

“Is it cold, sir?”--slight modulation, but still lifeless.

“IS IT COLD? Of course it's cold! Might have been standing in a morgue.
Take that down and have some fresh coffee sent up. Servants running
o'er each other and yet I can't get a--Go on, Jack! I didn't mean to
interrupt, but I'll clean the whole lot of 'em out of here if I don't
get better service.”

“No, Uncle Arthur, he isn't a banker--isn't even a broker; he's only a
paying teller in a bank,” continued Jack.

The older man turned his head and a look of surprise swept over his
round, fat face.

“Teller in a BANK?” he asked in an altered tone.

“Yes, the most charming, the most courteous old gentleman I have ever
met; I haven't seen anybody like him since I left home, and, just think,
he has promised to come and see me to-night.”

The drooping lips straightened and a shrewd, searching glance shot from
Arthur Breen's eyes. There was a brain behind this sleepy face--as many
of his competitors knew. It was not always in working order, but when it
was the man became another personality.

“Jack--” The voice was now as thin as the drawn lips permitted, with
caution in every tone, “you stop short off. You mustn't cotton to
everybody you pick up in New York--it won't do. Get you into trouble.
Don't bring him here; your aunt won't like it. When you get into a hole
with a fellow and can't help yourself, take him to the club. That's one
of the things I got you into the Magnolia for; but don't ever bring 'em
here.”

“But he's a personal friend of Mr. Morris, and a friend of another
friend of Mr. Morris's they called 'Major.'” It was not the first time
he had heard such inhospitable suggestions from his uncle.

“Oh, yes, I know; they've all got some old retainers hanging on that
they give a square meal to once a year, but don't you get mixed up with
'em.”

Parkins had returned by this time and was pouring a fresh cup of coffee.

“Now, Parkins, that's something like--No, I don't want any kidneys--I
don't want any toast--I don't want anything, Parkins--haven't I told you
so?”

“Yes, sir; thank you sir.”

“Black coffee is the only thing that'll settle this head. What you want
to do, Jack, is to send that old fossil word that you've got another
engagement, and... Parkins, is there anything going on here to-night?”

“Yes, sir; Miss Corinne is giving a small dance.”

“There, Jack--that's it. That'll let you out with a whole skin.”

“No, I can't, and I won't, Uncle Arthur,” he answered in an indignant
tone. “If you knew him as I do, and had seen him last night, you
would--”

“No, I don't want to know him and I don't want to see him. You are all
balled up, I see, and can't work loose, but take him upstairs; don't let
your aunt come across him or she'll have a fit.” Here he glanced at the
bronze clock. “What!--ten minutes past nine! Parkins, see if my cab is
at the door.... Jack, you ride down with me. I walked when I was your
age, and got up at daylight. Some difference, Jack, isn't there, whether
you've got a rich uncle to look after you or not.” This last came with a
wink.

It was only one of his pleasantries. He knew he was not rich; not in
the accepted sense. He might be a small star in the myriads forming the
Milky-Way of Finance, but there were planets millions of miles beyond
him, whose brilliancy he was sure he could never equal. The fact was
that the money which he had accumulated had been so much greater sum
than he had ever hoped for when he was a boy in a Western State--his
father went to Iowa in '49--and the changes in his finances had come
with such lightning rapidity (half a million made on a tip given him by
a friend, followed by other tips more or less profitable) that he loved
to pat his pride, so to speak, in speeches like this.

That he had been swept off his feet by the social and financial rush
about him was quite natural. His wife, whose early life had been one
long economy, had ambitions to which there was no limit and her escape
from her former thraldom had been as sudden and as swift as the upward
spring of a loosened balloon. Then again all the money needed to make
the ascension successful was at her disposal. Hence jewels, laces, and
clothes; hence elaborate dinners, the talk of the town: hence teas,
receptions, opera parties, week-end parties at their hired country
seat on Long Island; dances for Corinne; dinners for Corinne; birthday
parties for Corinne; everything, in fact, for Corinne, from manicures to
pug dogs and hunters.

His two redeeming qualities were his affection for his wife and his
respect for his word. He had no child of his own, and Corinne, though
respectful never showed him any affection. He had sent Jack to a
Southern school and college, managing meanwhile the little property
his father had left him, which, with some wild lands in the Cumberland
Mountains, practically worthless, was the boy's whole inheritance, and
of late had treated him as if he had been his own son.

As to his own affairs, close as he sailed to the wind in his money
transactions--so close sometimes that the Exchange had more than once
overhauled his dealings--it was generally admitted that when Arthur
Breen gave his WORD--a difficult thing often to get--he never broke it.
This was offset by another peculiarity with less beneficial results:
When he had once done a man a service only to find him ungrateful,
no amount of apologies or atonement thereafter ever moved him to
forgiveness. Narrow-gauge men are sometimes built that way.

It was to be expected, therefore, considering the quality of Duckworth's
champagne and the impression made on Jack by his uncle's outburst,
that the ride down town in the cab was marked by anything but cheerful
conversation between Breen and his nephew, each of whom sat absorbed in
his own reflections. “I didn't mean to be hard on the boy,” ruminated
Breen, “but if I had picked up everybody who wanted to know me, as Jack
has done, where would I be now?” Then, his mind still clouded by the
night at the club (he had not confined himself entirely to champagne),
he began, as was his custom, to concentrate his attention upon the
work of the day--on the way the market would open; on the remittance
a belated customer had promised and about which he had some doubt; the
meeting of the board of directors in the new mining company--“The Great
Mukton Lode,” in which he had an interest, and a large one--etc.

Jack looked out of the windows, his eyes taking in the remnants of
the autumnal tints in the Park, now nearly gone, the crowd filling
the sidewalks; the lumbering stages and the swifter-moving horse-cars
crammed with eager men anxious to begin the struggle of the day--not
with their hands--that mob had swept past hours before--but with their
brains--wits against wits and the devil take the man who slips and
falls.

Nothing of it all interested him. His mind was on the talk at the
breakfast table, especially his uncle's ideas of hospitality, all of
which had appalled and disgusted him. With his father there had always
been a welcome for every one, no matter what the position in life, the
only standard being one of breeding and character--and certainly Peter
had both. His uncle had helped him, of course--put him under obligations
he could never repay. Yet after all, it was proved now to him that he
was but a guest in the house enjoying only such rights as any other
guest might possess, and with no voice in the welcome--a condition
which would never be altered, until he became independent himself--a
possibility which at the moment was too remote to be considered. Then
his mind reverted to his conversation the night before with Mr. Grayson
and with this change of thought his father's portrait--the one that hung
in his room--loomed up. He had the night before turned on the lights--to
their fullest--and had scanned the picture closely, eager to find some
trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment of the man he loved best,
and whose memory was still almost a religion, but except that both Peter
and his father were bald, and that both wore high, old-fashioned collars
and neck-cloths, he had been compelled to admit with a sigh that there
was nothing about the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to
resemblance.

“Yet he's like my father, he is, he is,” he kept repeating to himself
as the cab sped on. “I'll find out what it is when I know him better.
To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I'll study it out,” and a joyous smile
flashed across his features as he thought of the treat in store for him.

When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the mahogany
partition with its pigeon-hole cut through the glass front he sat every
day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took out his books and papers
and made ready for work. He had charge of the check book, and he alone
signed the firm's name outside of the partners. “Rather young,” one of
them protested, until he looked into the boy's face, then he gave his
consent; something better than years of experience and discretion are
wanted where a scratch of a pen might mean financial ruin.

Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared
into his private office--another erection of ground glass and mahogany.
Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning
his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear
pocket of his trousers. With this he opened a small closet near his
desk--a mere box of a closet--took from it a squatty-shaped decanter
labelled “Rye, 1840,” poured out half a glass, emptied it into his
person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that
he was now “copper fastened inside and out”--removed all traces of the
incident and took up his morning's mail.

By this time the circle of chairs facing the huge blackboard in the
spacious outer office had begun to fill up. Some of the customers,
before taking their seats, hurried anxiously to the ticker, chattering
away in its glass case; others turned abruptly and left the room without
a word. Now and then a customer would dive into Breen's private room,
remain a moment and burst out again, his face an index of the condition
of his bank account.

When the chatter of the ticker had shifted from the London quotations
to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low
step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard,
its margin lettered with the initials of the principal stocks. The
appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk
always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary
days, with the market lifeless, but half of the orchestra seats would be
occupied. In whirl-times, with the ticker spelling ruin, not only were
the chairs full, but standing room only was available in the offices.

Their occupants came from all classes; clerks from up-town dry-goods
houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie,
or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had
devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who
had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling
them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up;
well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never
carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired
novices nervously rolling little wads of paper between their fingers and
thumbs--up every few minutes to listen to the talk of the ticker, too
anxious to wait until the sallow-faced young man with the piece of chalk
could make his record on the board. Some of them had gathered together
their last dollar. Two per cent. or one percent, or even one-half of one
per cent. rise or fall was all that stood between them and ruin.

“Very sorry, sir, but you know we told you when you opened the account
that you must keep your margins up,” Breen had said to an old man. The
old man knew; had known it all night as he lay awake, afraid to tell his
wife of the sword hanging above their heads. Knew it, too, when without
her knowledge he had taken the last dollar of the little nest-egg to
make good the deficit owed Breen & Co. over and above his margins,
together with some other things “not negotiable”--not our kind of
collateral but “stuff” that could “lie in the safe until he could make
some other arrangement,” the cashier had said with the firm's consent.

Queer safe, that of Breen & Co., and queer things went into it. Most of
them were still there. Jack thought some jeweller had sent part of his
stock down for safe-keeping when he first came across a tiny drawer of
which Breen alone kept the key. Each object could tell a story: a pair
of diamond ear-rings surely could, and so could four pearls on a gold
chain, and perhaps, too, a certain small watch, the case set with
jewels. One of these days they may be redeemed, or they may not,
depending upon whether the owners can scrape money enough together to
pay the balances owed in cash. But the four pearls on the gold chain are
likely to remain there--that poor fellow went overboard one morning off
Nantucket Light, and his secret went with him.

During the six months Jack had stood at his desk new faces had filled
the chairs--the talk had varied; though he felt only the weary monotony
of it all. Sometimes there had been hours of tense excitement, when even
his uncle had stood by the ticker, and when every bankable security in
the box had been overhauled and sent post-haste to the bank or trust
company. Jack, followed by the porter with a self-cocking revolver in
his outside pocket, had more than once carried the securities himself,
returning to the office on the run with a small scrap of paper good
for half a million or so tucked away in his inside pocket. Then the old
monotony had returned with its dull routine and so had the chatter and
talk. “Buy me a hundred.” “Yes, let 'em go.” “No, I don't want to risk
it.” “What's my balance?” “Thought you'd get another eighth for that
stock.” “Sold at that figure, anyhow,” etc.

Under these conditions life to a boy of Jack's provincial training and
temperament seemed narrowed down to an arm-chair, a black-board, a piece
of chalk and a restless little devil sputtering away in a glass case,
whose fiat meant happiness or misery. Only the tongue of the demon
was in evidence. The brain behind it, with its thousand slender nerves
quivering with the energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that
matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs. To them its
spoken word was the dictum of fate. Success meant debts paid, a balance
in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates--failure meant
obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of
a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these
turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige.
Taking a flier in the Street was altogether different--great financiers
were behind the fluctuations of values told by the tongue of the ticker,
and behind them was the wealth of the Republic and still in the far
distance the power of the American people. Few of them ever looked below
the grease paint, nor did the most discerning ever detect the laugh on
the clown's face.

The boy half hidden by the glass screen, through which millions were
passed and repassed every month, caught now and then a glimpse.

Once a faded, white-haired old man had handed Jack a check after banking
hours to make good an account--a man whose face had haunted him for
hours. His uncle told him the poor fellow had “run up solid” against a
short interest in a stock that some Croesus was manipulating to get even
with another Croesus who had manipulated HIM, and that the two
Croesuses had “buried the old man alive.” The name of the stock Jack had
forgotten, but the suffering in the victim's face had made an indelible
impression. In reply to Jack's further inquiry, his uncle had spoken as
if the poor fellow had been wandering about on some unknown highway
when the accident happened, failing to add that he himself had led him
through the gate and started him on the road; forgetting, too, to say
that he had collected the toll in margins, a sum which still formed
a considerable portion of Breen & Co.'s bank account. One bit of
information which Breen had vouchsafed, while it did not relieve the
gloom of the incident, added a note of courage to the affair:

“He was game, however, all the same, Jack. Had to go down into his
wife's stocking, I hear. Hard hit, but he took it like a man.”



CHAPTER V.



While all this was going on downtown under the direction of the business
end of the house of Breen, equally interesting events were taking place
uptown under the guidance of its social head. Strict orders had
been given by Mrs. Breen the night before that certain dustings and
arrangings of furniture should take place, the spacious stairs swept,
and the hectic hired palms in their great china pots watered. I say “the
night before,” because especial stress was laid upon the fact that on
no account whatever were either Mrs. Breen or her daughter Corinne to be
disturbed until noon--neither of them having retired until a late hour
the night before.

So strictly were these orders carried out that all that did reach the
younger woman's ear--and this was not until long after mid-day--was a
scrap of news which crept upstairs from the breakfast table via Parkins
wireless, was caught by Corinne's maid and delivered in manifold with
that young lady's coffee and buttered rolls. This when deciphered meant
that Jack was not to be at the dance that evening--he having determined
instead to spend his time up stairs with a disreputable old fellow whom
he had picked up somewhere at a supper the preceding night.

Corinne thought over the announcement for a moment, gazed into the
egg-shell cup that Hortense was filling from the tiny silver coffee-pot,
and a troubled expression crossed her face. “What has come over Jack?”
 she asked herself. “I never knew him to do anything like this before. Is
he angry, I wonder, because I danced with Garry the other night? It
WAS his dance, but I didn't think he would care. He has always done
everything to please me--until now.” Perhaps the boy was about to slip
the slight collar he had worn in her service--one buckled on by him
willingly because--though she had not known it--he was a guest in the
house. Heretofore she said to herself Jack had been her willing slave,
a feather in her cap--going everywhere with her; half the girls were
convinced he was in love with her--a theory which she had encouraged.
What would they say now? This prospect so disturbed the young woman that
she again touched the button, and again Hortense glided in.

“Hortense, tell Parkins to let me know the moment Mr. John comes in--and
get me my blue tea-gown; I sha'n't go out to-day.” This done she sank
back on her pillows.

She was a slight little body, this Corinne--blue-eyed, fair-haired, with
a saucy face and upturned nose. Jack thought when he first saw her that
she looked like a wren with its tiny bill in the air--and Jack was not
far out of the way. And yet she was a very methodical, level-headed
little wren, with several positive convictions which dominated her
life--one of them being that everybody about her ought to do, not as
they, but as she, pleased. She had begun, and with pronounced success,
on her mother as far back as she could remember, and had then tried
her hand on her stepfather until it became evident that as her mother
controlled that gentleman it was a waste of time to experiment further.
All of which was a saving of stones without the loss of any birds.

Where she failed--and she certainly had failed, was with Jack, who
though punctiliously polite was elusive and--never quite subdued. Yet
the discovery made, she neither pouted nor lost her temper, but merely
bided her time. Sooner or later, she knew, of course, this boy, who
had seen nothing of city life and who was evidently dazed with all the
magnificence of the stately home overlooking the Park, would find his
happiest resting-place beneath the soft plumage of her little wing. And
if by any chance he should fall in love with her--and what more natural;
did not everybody fall in love with her?--would it not be wiser to let
him think she returned it, especially if she saw any disposition on the
young man's part to thwart her undisputed sway of the household?

For months she had played her little game, yet to her amazement none of
the things she had anticipated had happened. Jack had treated her as
he would any other young woman of his acquaintance--always with
courtesy--always doing everything to oblige her, but never yielding to
her sway. He would laugh sometimes at her pretensions, just as he would
have laughed at similar self-assertiveness on the part of any one else
with whom he must necessarily be thrown, but never by thought, word
or deed had he ever given my Lady Wren the faintest suspicion that he
considered her more beautiful, better dressed, or more entertaining,
either in song, chirp, flight or plumage, than the flock of other birds
about her. Indeed, the Scribe knows it to be a fact that if Jack's
innate politeness had not forbidden, he would many times have told her
truths, some of them mighty unpleasant ones, to which her ears had been
strangers since her school-girl days.

This unstudied treatment, strange to say--the result really, of the
boy's indifference--had of late absorbed her. What she could not have
she generally longed for, and there was not the slightest question up to
the present moment that Jack was still afield.

Again the girl pressed the button of the cord within reach of her hand,
and for the third time Hortense entered.

“Have you told Parkins I want to know the very instant Mr. John comes
in?”

“Yes, miss.”

“And, Hortense, did you understand that Mr. John was to go out to meet
the gentleman, or was the gentleman to come to his rooms?”

“To his rooms, I think, miss.”

She was wearing her blue tea-gown, stretched out on the cushions
of one of the big divans in the silent drawing-room, when she heard
Jack's night-key touch the lock. Springing to her feet she ran toward
him.

“Why, Jack, what's this I hear about your not coming to my dance? It
isn't true, is it?” She was close to him now, her little head cocked on
one side, her thin, silken draperies dripping about her slender figure.

“Who told you?”

“Parkins told Hortense.”

“Leaky Parkins?” laughed Jack, tossing his hat on the hall table.

“But you are coming, aren't you, Jack? Please do!”

“Not to-night; you don't need me, Corinne.” His voice told her at once
that not only was the leash gone but that the collar was off as well.

“Yes, but I do.”

“Then please excuse me, for I have an old gentleman coming to pay me
a visit. The finest old gentleman, by the way, you ever saw! A regular
thoroughbred, Corinne--who looks like a magnificent portrait!” he added
in his effort to interest her.

“But let him come some other time,” she coaxed, holding the lapel of his
coat, her eyes searching his.

“What, turn to the wall a magnificent old portrait!” This came with a
mock grimace, his body bent forward, his eyes brimming with laughter.

“Be serious, Jack, and tell me if you think it very nice in you to stay
upstairs in your den when I am giving a dance? Everybody will know you
are at home, and we haven't enough men as it is. Garry can't come, he
writes me. He has to dine with some men at the club.”

“I really AM sorry, Corinne, but I can't this time.” Jack had hold
of her hand now; for a brief moment he was sorry he had not postponed
Peter's visit until the next day; he hated to cause any woman a
disappointment. “If it was anybody else I might send him word to call
another night, but you don't know Mr. Grayson; he isn't the kind of a
man you can treat like that. He does me a great honor to come, anyhow.
Just think of his coming to see a boy like me--and he so--”

“Well, bring him downstairs, then.” Her eyes began to flash; she had
tried all the arts she knew--they were not many--but they had won
heretofore. “Mother will take care of him. A good many of the girls'
fathers come for them.”

“Bring him downstairs to a dance!” Jack answered with a merry laugh. “He
isn't that kind of an old gentleman, either. Why, Corinne, you ought to
see him! You might as well ask old Bishop Gooley to lead the german.”

Jack's foot was now ready to mount the lower step of the stairs. Corinne
bit her lip.

“You never do anything to please me!” she snapped back. She knew she
was fibbing, but something must be done to check this new form of
independence--and then, now that Garry couldn't come, she really needed
him. “You don't want to come, that's it--” She facing him now, her
little nose high in the air, her cheeks flaming with anger.

“You must not say that, Corinne,” he answered in a slightly indignant
tone.

Corinne drew herself up to her full height--toes included; not very
high, but all she could do--and said in a voice pitched to a high key,
her finger within a few inches of his nose:

“It's true, and I will say it!”

The rustle of silk was heard overhead, and a plump, tightly laced woman
in voluminous furs, her head crowned by a picture hat piled high with
plumes, was making her way down the stairs. Jack looked up and waved his
hand to his aunt, and then stood at mock attention, like a corporal on
guard, one hand raised to salute her as she passed. The boy, with the
thought of Peter coming, was very happy this afternoon.

“What are you two quarrelling about?” came the voice. Rather a soft
voice with a thread of laziness running through it.

“Jack's too mean for anything, mother. He knows we haven't men enough
without him for a cotillion, now that Garry has dropped out, and he's
been just stupid enough to invite some old man to come and see him this
evening.”

The furs and picture hat swept down and on, Jack standing at attention,
hands clasping an imaginary musket his face drawn down to its severest
lines, his cheeks puffed out to make him look the more solemn. When the
wren got “real mad” he would often say she was the funniest thing alive.

“I'm a pig, I know, aunty” (here Jack completed his salute with a great
flourish), “but Corinne does not really want me, and she knows it. She
only wants to have her own way. They don't dance cotillions when they
come here--at least they didn't last time, and I don't believe they will
to-night. They sit around with each other in the corners and waltz with
the fellows they've picked out--and it's all arranged between them, and
has been for a week--ever since they heard Corinne was going to give a
dance.” The boy spoke with earnestness and a certain tone of conviction
in his voice, although his face was still radiant.

“Well, can't you sit around, too, Jack?” remarked his aunt, pausing in
her onward movement for an instant. “I'm sure there will be some lovely
girls.”

“Yes, but they don't want me. I've tried it too often, aunty--they've
all got their own set.”

“It's because you don't want to be polite to any of them,” snapped
Corinne with a twist of her body, so as to face him again.

“Now, Corinne, that isn't fair; I am never impolite to anybody in this
house, but I'm tired of--”

“Well, Garry isn't tired.” This last shot was fired at random.

Again the aunt poured oil: “Come, children, come! Don't let's talk any
more about it. If Jack has made an engagement it can't be helped, I
suppose, but don't spoil your party, my dear. Find Parkins, Jack, and
send him to me.... Ah, Parkins--if any one calls say I'll be out until
six o'clock.”

“Yes, my Lady.” Parkins knew on which side his bread was buttered. She
had reproved him at first, but his excuse was that she was so like his
former mistress, Lady Colchester, that he sometimes forgot himself.

And again “my Lady” swept on, this time out of the door and into her
waiting carriage.



CHAPTER VI



Jack's impatience increased as the hour for Peter's visit approached.
Quarter of nine found him leaning over the banisters outside his small
suite of rooms, peering down between the hand-rails watching the top of
every head that crossed the spacious hall three flights below--he dare
not go down to welcome his guest, fearing some of the girls, many
of whom had already arrived, would know he was in the house. Fifteen
minutes later the flash of a bald head, glistening in the glare of the
lower hall lantern, told him that the finest old gentleman in the world
had arrived, and on the very minute. Parkins's special instructions,
repeated for the third time, were to bring Mr. Peter Grayson--it was
wonderful what an impressive note was in the boy's voice when he rolled
out the syllables--up at once, surtout, straight-brimmed hat, overshoes
(if he wore any), umbrella and all, and the four foot-falls--two
cat-like and wabbly, as befitted the obsequious flunky, and two firm and
decided, as befitted a grenadier crossing a bridge--could now be heard
mounting the stairs.

“So here you are!” cried Peter, holding out both hands to the overjoyed
boy--“'way up near the sky. One flight less than my own. Let me get my
breath, my boy, before I say another word. No, don't worry, only Anno
Domini--you'll come to it some day. How delightfully you are settled!”

They had entered the cosey sitting-room and Jack was helping with his
coat; Parkins, with his nose in the air (he had heard his master's
criticism), having already placed his hat on a side table and the
umbrella in the corner.

“Where will you sit--in the big chair by the fire or in this long straw
one?” cried the boy, Peter's coat still in his hand.

“Nowhere yet; let me look around a little.” One of Peter's tests of a
man was the things he lived with. “Ah! books?” and he peered at a row
on the mantel. “Macaulay, I see, and here's Poe: Good, very good--why,
certainly it is--Where did you get this Morland?” and again Peter's
glasses went up. “Through that door is your bedroom--yes, and the bath.
Very charming, I must say. You ought to live very happily here; few
young fellows I know have half your comforts.”

Jack had interrupted him to say that the Morland print was one that he
had brought from his father's home, and that the books had come from the
same source, but Peter kept on in his tour around the room. Suddenly he
stopped and looked steadily at a portrait over the mantel.

“Yes--your father--”

“You knew!” cried Jack.

“Knew! How could any one make a mistake? Fine head. About fifty I should
say. No question about his firmness or his kindness. Yes--fine head--and
a gentleman, that is best of all. When you come to marry always hunt up
the grandfather--saves such a lot of trouble in after life,” and one of
Peter's infectious laughs filled the room.

“Do you think he looks anything like Uncle Arthur? You have seen him, I
think you said.”

Peter scanned the portrait. “Not a trace. That may also be a question of
grandfathers--” and another laugh rippled out. “But just be thankful
you bear his name. It isn't always necessary to have a long line of
gentlemen behind you, and if you haven't any, or can't trace them, a
man, if he has pluck and grit, can get along without them; but it's very
comforting to know they once existed. Now let me sit down and listen to
you,” added Peter, whose random talk had been inspired by the look of
boyish embarrassment on Jack's face. He had purposely struck many notes
in order to see which one would echo in the lad's heart, so that his
host might find himself, just as he had done when Jack with generous
impulse had sprang from his chair to carry Minott the ring.

The two seated themselves--Peter in the easy chair and Jack opposite.
The boy's eyes roamed from the portrait, with its round, grave face, to
Peter's head resting on the cushioned back, illumined by the light
of the lamp, throwing into relief the clear-cut lips, little gray
side-whiskers and the tightly drawn skin covering his scalp, smooth as
polished ivory.

“Am I like him?” asked Peter. He had caught the boy's glances and had
read his thoughts.

“No--and yes. I can't see it in the portrait, but I do in the way you
move your hands and in the way you bow. I keep thinking of him when I am
with you. It may, as you say, be a good thing to have a gentleman for a
father, sir, but it is a dreadful thing, all the same, to lose him just
as you need him most. I wouldn't hate so many of the things about me if
I had him to go to now and then.”

“Tell me about him and your early life,” cried Peter, crossing one leg
over the other. He knew the key had been struck; the boy might now play
on as he chose.

“There is very little to tell. I lived in the old home with an aunt
after my father's death. And went to school and then to college at
Hagerstown--quite a small college--where uncle looked after me--he paid
the expenses really--and then I was clerk in a law office for a while,
and at my aunt's death about a year ago the old place was sold and I had
no home, and Uncle Arthur sent for me to come here.”

“Very decent in him, and you should never forget him for it,” and again
Peter's eyes roamed around the perfectly appointed room.

“I know it, sir, and at first the very newness and strangeness of
everything delighted me. Then I began to meet the people. They were so
different from those in my part of the country, especially the young
fellows--Garry is not so bad, because he really loves his work and is
bound to succeed--everybody says he has a genius for architecture--but
the others--and the way they treat the young girls, and what is more
unaccountable to me is the way the young girls put up with it.”

Peter had settled himself deeper in his chair, his eyes shaded with one
hand and looked intently at the boy.

“Uncle Arthur is kind to me, but the life smothers me. I can't breathe
sometimes. Nothing my father taught me is considered worth while here.
People care for other things.”

“What, for instance?” Peter's hand never moved, nor did his body.

“Why stocks and bonds and money, for instance,” laughed Jack, beginning
to be annoyed at his own tirade--half ashamed of it in fact. “Stocks are
good enough in their way, but you don't want to live with them from ten
o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, and then hear
nothing else talked about until you go to bed. That's why that dinner
last night made such an impression on me. Nobody said money once.”

“But every one of those men had his own hobby--”

“Yes, but in my uncle's world they all ride one and the same horse.
I don't want to be a pessimist, Mr. Grayson, and I want you to set me
straight if I am wrong, but Mr. Morris and every one of those men about
him were the first men I've seen in New York who appear to me to be
doing the things that will live after them. What are we doing down-town?
Gambling the most of us.”

“But your life here isn't confined to your uncle and his stock-gambling
friends. Surely these lovely young girls--two of them came in with me--”
 and Peter smiled, “must make your life delightful.”

Jack's eyes sought the floor, then he answered slowly:

“I hope you won't think me a cad, but--No, I'm not going to say a word
about them, only I can't get accustomed to them and there's no use of
my saying that I can. I couldn't treat any girl the way they are treated
here. And I tell you another thing--none of the young girls whom I
know at home would treat me as these girls treat the men they know. I'm
queer, I guess, but I might as well make a clean breast of it all. I am
an ingrate, perhaps, but I can't help thinking that the old life at home
was the best. We loved our friends, and they were welcome at our table
any hour, day or night. We had plenty of time for everything; we lived
out of doors or in doors, just as we pleased, and we dressed to suit
ourselves, and nobody criticised. Why, if I drop into the Magnolia on my
way up-town and forget to wear a derby hat with a sack coat, or a black
tie with a dinner-jacket, everybody winks and nudges his neighbor. Did
you ever hear of such nonsense in your life?”

The boy paused as if the memory of some incident in which he was
ridiculed was alive in his mind. Peter's eyes were still fixed on his
face.

“Go on--I'm listening; and what else hurts you? Pour it all out. That's
what I came for. You said last night nobody would listen--I will.”

“Well, then, I hate the sham of it all; the silly social distinctions;
the fits and starts of hospitality; the dinners given for show. Nothing
else going on between times; even the music is hired. I want to hear
music that bubbles out--old Hannah singing in the kitchen, and Tom, my
father's old butler, whistling to himself--and the dogs barking, and
the birds singing outside. I'm ashamed of myself making comparisons, but
that was the kind of life I loved, because there was sincerity in it.”

“No work?” There was a note of sly merriment in the inquiry, but Jack
never caught it.

“Not much. My father was Judge and spent part of the time holding court,
and his work never lasted but a few hours a day, and when I wanted to go
fishing or shooting, or riding with the girls, Mr. Larkin always let me
off. And I had plenty of time to read--and for that matter I do here, if
I lock myself up in this room. That low library over there is full of my
father's books.”

Again Peter's voice had a tinge of merriment in it.

“And who supported the family?” he asked in a lower voice.

“My father.”

“And who supported him?”

The question brought Jack to a full stop. He had been running on,
pouring out his heart for the first time since his sojourn in New York,
and to a listener whom he knew he could trust.

“Why--his salary, of course,” answered Jack in astonishment, after a
pause.

“Anything else?”

“Yes--the farm.”

“And who worked that?”

“My father's negroes--some of them his former slaves.”

“And have you any money of your own--anything your father left you?”

“Only enough to pay taxes on some wild lands up in Cumberland County,
and which I'm going to hold on to for his sake.”

Peter dropped his shading fingers, lifted his body from the depths of
the easy chair and leaned forward so that the light fell full on his
face. He had all the information he wanted now.

“And now let me tell you my story, my lad. It is a very short one. I
had the same sort of a home, but no father--none that I remember--and no
mother, they both died before my sister Felicia and I were grown up.
At twelve I left school; at fifteen I worked in a country store--up at
daylight and to bed at midnight, often. From twenty to twenty-five I
was entry clerk in a hardware store; then book-keeper; then cashier in
a wagon factory; then clerk in a village bank--then book-keeper again
in my present bank, and there I have been ever since. My only advantages
were a good constitution and the fact that I came of gentle people. Here
we are both alike--you at twenty--how old?--twenty two?... Well, make
it twenty-two.... You at twenty-two and I at twenty-two seem to have
started out in life with the same natural advantages, so far as years
and money go, but with this difference--Shall I tell you what it is?”

“Yes.”

“That I worked and loved it, and love it still, and that you are lazy
and love your ease. Don't be offended--” Here Peter laid his hand on the
boy's knee. He waited an instant, and not getting any reply, kept on:
“What you want to do is to go to work. It wouldn't have been honorable
in you to let your father support you after you were old enough to
earn your own living, and it isn't honorable in you, with your present
opinions, to live on your uncle's bounty, and to be discontented
and rebellious at that, for that's about what it all amounts to. You
certainly couldn't pay for these comforts outside of this house on what
Breen & Co. can afford to pay you. Half of your mental unrest, my lad,
is due to the fact that you do not know the joy and comfort to be got
out of plain, common, unadulterated work.”

“I'll do anything that is not menial.”

“What do you mean by 'menial'?”

“Well, working like a day-laborer.”

“Most men who have succeeded have first worked with their hands.”

“Not my uncle.”

“No, not your uncle--he's an exception--one among a million, and then
again he isn't through.”

“But he's worth two million, they say.”

“Yes, but he never earned it, and he never worked for it, and he doesn't
now. Do you want to follow in his footsteps?”

“No--not with all his money.” This came in a decided tone. “But surely
you wouldn't want me to work with my hands, would you?”

“I certainly should, if necessary.”

Jack looked at him, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face.

“But I COULDN'T do anything menial.”

“There isn't anything menial in any kind of work from cleaning a stable
up! The menial things are the evasions of work--tricks by which men are
cheated out of their just dues.”

“Stock gambling?”

“Yes--sometimes, when the truth is withheld.”

“That's what I think; that's what I meant last night when I told
you about the faro-bank. I laughed over it, and yet I can't see much
difference, although I have never seen one.”

“So I understood, but you were wrong about it. Your uncle bears a very
good name in the Street. He is not as much to blame as the system.
Perhaps some day the firm will become real bankers, than which there is
no more honorable calling.”

“But is it wrong to want to fish and shoot and have time to read.”

“No, it is wrong not to do it when you have the time and the money. I
like that side of your nature. My own theory is that every man should
in the twenty-four hours of the day devote eight to work, eight to sleep
and eight to play. But this can only be done when the money to support
the whole twenty-four hours is in sight, either in wages, or salary, or
invested securities. More money than this--that is the surplusage that
men lock up in their tin boxes, is a curse. But with that you have
nothing to do--not yet, anyhow. Now, if I catch your meaning, your idea
is to go back to your life at home. In other words you want to live the
last end of your life first--and without earning the right to it.
And because you cannot do this you give yourself up to criticising
everything about you. Getting only at the faults and missing all the
finer things in life. If you would permit me to advise you--” he still
had his hand on the lad's knee, searching the soft brown eyes--“I would
give up finding fault and first try to better things, and I would begin
right here where you are. Some of the great banking houses which keep
the pendulum of the world swinging true have grown to importance through
just such young men as yourself, who were honest and had high ideals
and who so impressed their own personalities upon everybody about
them--customers and employers--that the tone of the concern was raised
at once and with it came a world-wide success. I have been thirty years
on the Street and have watched the rise of half the firms about me,
and in every single instance some one of the younger men--boys, many of
them--has pulled the concern up and out of a quagmire and stood it on
its feet. And the reverse is true: half the downfalls have come from
those same juniors, who thought they knew some short road to success,
which half the time was across disreputable back lots. Why not give
up complaining and see what better things you can do? I'm not quite
satisfied about your having stayed upstairs even to receive me.
Your aunt loves society and the daughter--what did you say her name
was--Corinne? Yes, Miss Corinne being young, loves to have a good time.
Listen! do you hear?--there goes another waltz. Now, as long as you do
live here, why not join in it too and help out the best you can?--and
if you have anything of your own to offer in the way of good cheer, or
thoughtfulness, or kindness, or whatever you do have which they lack--or
rather what you think they lack--wouldn't it be wiser--wouldn't it--if
you will permit me, my lad--be a little BETTER BRED to contribute
something of your own excellence to the festivity?”

It was now Jack's turn to lean back in his chair and cover his face, but
with two ashamed hands. Not since his father's death had any one talked
to him like this--never with so much tenderness and truth and with every
word meant for his good. All his selfrighteousness, his silly conceit
and vainglory stood out before him. What an ass he had been. What a
coxcomb. What a boor, really.

“What would you have me do?” he asked, a tone of complete surrender in
his voice. The portrait and Peter were one and the same! His father had
come to life.

“I don't know yet. We'll think about that another time, but we won't do
it now. I ought to be ashamed of myself for having spoiled your evening
by such serious talk (he wasn't ashamed--he had come for that very
purpose). Now show me some of your books and tell me what you read, and
what you love best.”

He was out of the chair before he ceased speaking, his heels striking
the floor, bustling about in his prompt, exact manner, examining the few
curios and keepsakes on the mantel and tables, running his eyes over the
rows of bindings lining the small bookcase; his hand on Jack's shoulder
whenever the boy opened some favorite author to hunt for a passage to
read aloud to Peter, listening with delight, whether the quotation was
old or new to him.

Jack, suddenly remembering that his guest was standing, tried to lead
him back to his seat by the fire, but Peter would have none of it.

“No--too late. Why, bless me, it's after eleven o'clock! Hear the
music--they are still at it. Now I'm going to insist that you go down
and have a turn around the room yourself; there were such a lot of
pretty girls when I came in.”

“Too late for that, too,” laughed Jack, merry once more. “Corinne
wouldn't speak to me if I showed my face now, and then there will be
plenty more dances which I can go to, and so make it all up with her.
I'm not yet as sorry as I ought to be about this dance. Your being here
has been such a delight. May I--may--I come and see you some time?”

“That's just what you will do, and right away. Just as soon as my dear
sister Felicia comes down, and she'll be here very soon. I'll send
for you, never fear. Yes, the right sleeve first, and now my hat and
umbrella. Ah, here they are. Now, good night, my boy, and thank you for
letting me come.”

“You know I dare not go down with you,” explained Jack with a smile.

“Oh, yes--I know--I know. Good night--” and the sharp, quick tread of
the old man grew fainter and fainter as he descended the stairs.

Jack waited, craning his head, until he caught a glimpse of the
glistening head as it passed once more under the lantern, then he went
into his room and shut the door.

Had he followed behind his guest he would have witnessed a little comedy
which would have gone far in wiping clean all trace of his uncle's
disparaging remarks of the morning. He would have enjoyed, too,
Parkins's amazement. As the Receiving Teller of the Exeter Bank
reached the hall floor the President of the Clearing House--the most
distinguished man in the Street and one to whom Breen kotowed with
genuflections equalling those of Parkins--accompanied by his daughter
and followed by the senior partner of Breen & Co., were making their
way to the front door. The second man in the chocolate livery with the
potato-bug waistcoat had brought the Magnate's coat and hat, and Parkins
stood with his hand on the door-knob. Then, to the consternation of
both master and servant, the great man darted forward and seized Peter's
hand.

“Why, my dear Mr. Grayson! This is indeed a pleasure. I didn't see
you--were you inside?”

“No--I've been upstairs with young Mr. Breen,” replied Peter, with a
comprehensive bow to Host, Magnate and Magnate's daughter. Then, with
the grace and dignity of an ambassador quitting a salon, he passed out
into the night.

Breen found his breath first: “And you know him?”

“Know him!” cried the Magnate--“of course I know him! One of the most
delightful men in New York; and I'm glad that you do--you're luckier
than I--try as I may I can hardly ever get him inside my house.”

I was sitting up for the old fellow when he entered his cosey red room
and dropped into a chair before the fire. I had seen the impression the
young man had made upon him at the dinner and was anxious to learn the
result of his visit. I had studied the boy somewhat myself, noting
his bright smile, clear, open face without a trace of guile, and the
enthusiasm that took possession of him when his friend won the prize.
That he was outside the class of young men about him I could see from
a certain timidity of glance and gesture--as if he wanted to be kept in
the background. Would the old fellow, I wondered, burden his soul with
still another charge?

Peter was laughing when he entered; he had laughed all the way
down-town, he told me. What particularly delighted him--and here he
related the Portman incident--was the change in Breen's face when old
Portman grasped his hand so cordially.

“Made of pinchbeck, my dear Major, both of them, and yet how genuine it
looks on the surface, and what a lot of it is in circulation. Quite as
good as the real thing if you don't know the difference,” and again he
laughed heartily.

“And the boy,” I asked, “was he disappointing?”

“Young Breen?--not a bit of it. He's like all the young fellows who come
up here from the South--especially the country districts--and he's
from western Maryland, he says. Got queer ideas about work and what a
gentleman should do to earn his living--same old talk. Hot-house plants
most of them--never amount to anything, really, until they are pruned
and set out in the cold.”

“Got any sense?” I ventured.

“No, not much--not yet--but he's got temperament and refinement and a
ten commandments' code of morals.”

“Rather rare, isn't it?” I asked.

“Yes--perhaps so.”

“And I suppose you are going to take him up and do for him, like the
others.”

Peter picked up the poker and made a jab at the fire; then he answered
slowly:

“Well, Major, I can't tell yet--not positively. But he's certainly worth
saving.”



CHAPTER VII



With the closing of the front door upon the finest Old Gentleman in the
World, a marked change took place in the mental mechanism of several of
our most important characters. The head of the firm of Breen & Co. was
so taken aback that for the moment that shrewdest of financiers was
undecided as to whether he or Parkins should rush out into the night
after the departing visitor and bring him back, and open the best in the
cellar. “Send a man out of my house,” he said to himself, “whom Portman
couldn't get to his table except at rare intervals! Well, that's one on
me!”

The lid that covered the upper half of Parkins's intelligence also
received a jolt; it was a coal-hole lid that covered emptiness, but now
and then admitted the light.

“Might 'ave known from the clothes 'e wore 'e was no common PUR-son,” he
said to himself. “To tell you the truth--” this to the second man in the
potato-bug waistcoat, when they were dividing between them the bottle
of “Extra Dry” three-quarters full, that Parkins had smuggled into the
pantry with the empty bottles (“Dead Men,” Breen called them)--“to tell
you the truth, Frederick, when I took 'is 'at and coat hupstairs 'e give
me a real start 'e looked that respectable”

As to Jack, not only his mind but his heart were in a whirl.

Half the night he lay awake wondering what he could do to follow Peter's
advice while preserving his own ideals. He had quite forgotten that part
of the older man's counsel which referred to the dignity of work, even
of that work which might be considered as menial. If the truth must be
told, it was his vanity alone which had been touched by the suggestion
that in him might lay the possibility of reforming certain conditions
around him. He was willing, even anxious, to begin on Breen & Co.,
subjecting his uncle, if need be, to a vigorous overhauling. Nothing he
felt could daunt him in his present militant state, upheld, as he felt
that he was, by the approval of Peter. Not a very rational state of
mind, the Scribe must confess, and only to be accounted for by the fact
that Peter's talk, instead of clearing Jack's mind of old doubts, had
really clouded it the more--quite as a bottle of mixture when shaken
sends its insoluble particles whirling throughout the whole.

It was not until the following morning, indeed, that the sediment began
to settle, and some of the sanity of Peter's wholesome prescription to
produce a clarifying effect. As long as he, Jack, lived upon his uncle's
bounty--and that was really what it amounted it--he must at least try to
contribute his own quota of good cheer and courtesy. This was what Peter
had done him the honor to advise, and he must begin at once if he wanted
to show his appreciation of the courtesy.

His uncle opened the way:

“Why, I didn't know until I saw him go out that he was a friend of Mr.
Portman's,” he said as he sipped his coffee.

“Neither did I. But does it make any difference?” answered Jack,
flipping off the top of his egg.

“Well I should think so--about ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent,”
 replied the older man emphatically. “Let's invite him to dinner, Jack.
Maybe he'll come to one I'm giving next week and--”

“I'll ask him--that is... perhaps, though, you might write him a note,
uncle, and--”

“Of course,” interrupted Breen, ignoring the suggestion, “when I wanted
you to take him to the club I didn't know who he was.”

“Of course you did not,” echoed Jack, suppressing a smile.

“The club! No, not by a damned sight!” exclaimed the head of the house
of Breen. As this latter observation was addressed to the circumambient
air, and not immediately to Jack, it elicited no response. Although
slightly profane, Jack was clever enough to read in its tones not
only ample apology for previous criticisms but a sort of prospective
reparation, whereupon our generous young gentleman forgave his uncle at
once, and thought that from this on he might like him the better.

Even Parkins came in for a share of Jack's most gracious intentions,
and though he was as silent as an automaton playing a game of chess, a
slight crack was visible in the veneer of his face when Jack thanked him
for having brought Mr. Grayson--same reverential pronunciation--upstairs
himself instead of allowing Frederick or one of the maid-servants to
perform that service.

As for his apologies to Corinne and his aunt for having remained in his
room after Mr. Grayson's departure, instead of taking part in the last
hours of the dance--one o'clock was the exact hour--these were reserved
until those ladies should appear at dinner, when they were made with
so penitential a ring in his voice that his aunt at once jumped to the
conclusion that he must have been bored to death by the old fellow,
while Corinne hugged herself in the belief that perhaps after all Jack
was renewing his interest in her; a delusion which took such possession
of her small head that she finally determined to send Garry a
note begging him to come to her at once, on business of the UTMOST
IMPORTANCE; two strings being better than one, especially when they were
to be played each against the other.

As to the uplifting of the house of Breen & Co., and the possibility of
so small a tail as himself being able to wag so large a dog as his uncle
and his partners, that seemed now to be so chimerical an undertaking
that he laughed when he thought of it.

This urbanity of mood was still with him when some days later he dropped
into the Magnolia Club on his way home, his purpose being to find Garry
and to hear about the supper which his club friends had given him to
celebrate his winning of the Morris ring.

Little Biffton was keeping watch when Jack swung in with that free
stride of his that showed more than anything else his muscular body and
the way he had taken care of and improved it. No dumb-bells or clubs for
fifteen minutes in the morning--but astride a horse, his thighs gripping
a bare-back, roaming the hills day after day--the kind of outdoor
experience that hardens a man all over without specializing his biceps
or his running gear. Little Biff never had any swing to his gait--none
that his fellows ever noticed. Biff went in for repose--sometimes hours
at a time. Given a club chair, a package of cigarettes and some one to
talk to him and Biff could be happy a whole afternoon.

“Ah, Breen, old man! Come to anchor.” Here he moved back a chair an inch
or two with his foot, and pushed his silver cigarette-case toward the
newcomer.

“Thank you,” replied Jack. “I've just dropped in to look for Garry
Minott. Has he been in?”

Biff was the bulletin-board of the Magnolia club. As he roomed upstairs,
he could be found here at any hour of the day or night.

Biff did not reply at once; there was no use in hurrying--not about
anything. Besides, the connection between Biff's ears and his brain
was never very good. One had to ring him up several times before he
answered.

Jack waited for an instant, and finding that the message was delayed
in transmission, helped himself to one of Biff's “Specials”--bearing in
gold letters his name “Brent Biffton” in full on the rice paper--dropped
into the proffered chair and repeated the question:

“Have you seen Garry?”

“Yes--upstairs. Got a deck in the little room. Been there all afternoon.
Might go up and butt in. Touch that bell before you go and say what.”

“No--I won't drink anything, if you don't mind. You heard about Garry's
winning the prize?”

“No.” Biffton hadn't moved since he had elongated his foot in search of
Jack's chair.

“Why Garry got first prize in his office. I went with him to the supper;
he's with Holker Morris, you know.”

“Yes. Rather nice. Yes, I did hear. The fellows blew him off upstairs.
Kept it up till the steward shut 'em out. Awfully clever fellow, Minott.
My Governor wanted me to do something in architecture, but it takes
such a lot of time... Funny how a fellow will dress himself.” Biffton's
sleepy eyes were sweeping the Avenue. “Pendergast just passed wearing
white spats--A month too late for spats--ought to know better. Touch the
bell, Breen, and say what.”

Again Jack thanked him, and again Biffton relapsed into silence. Rather
a damper on a man of his calibre, when a fellow wouldn't touch a bell
and say what.

Jack having a certain timidity about “butting in”--outsiders didn't do
such things where he came from--settled himself into the depths of the
comfortable leather-covered arm-chair and waited for Garry to finish
his game. From where he sat he could not only overlook the small tables
holding a choice collection of little tear-bottles, bowls of crushed ice
and high-pressure siphons, but his eye also took in the stretch beyond,
the club windows commanding the view up and down and quite across the
Avenue, as well as the vista to the left.

This outlook was the most valuable asset the Magnolia possessed. If the
parasol was held flat, with its back to the club-house, and no glimpse
of the pretty face possible, it was, of course, unquestionable evidence
to the member looking over the top of his cocktail that neither the
hour or the place was propitious. If, however, it swayed to the right or
left, or better still, was folded tight, then it was equally conclusive
that not only was the coast clear, but that any number of things might
happen, either at Tiffany's, or the Academy, or wherever else one of
those altogether accidental--“Why-who-would-have-thought-of-seeing-you-
here” kind of meetings take place--meetings so delightful in themselves
because so unexpected.

These outlooks, too, were useful in solving many of the social problems
that afflicted the young men about town; the identity, for instance,
of the occupant of the hansom who had just driven past, heavily veiled,
together with her destination and her reason for being out at all; why
the four-in-hand went up empty and came back with a pretty woman beside
the “Tooler,” and then turned up a side street toward the Park, instead
of taking the Avenue into its confidence; what the young wife of the old
doctor meant when she waved her hand to the occupant of a third-story
window, and who lived there, and why--None of their business, of
course--never could be--but each and every escapade, incident and
adventure being so much thrice-blessed manna to souls stranded in the
desert waste of club conversation.

None of these things interested our hero, and he soon found himself
listening to the talk at an adjoining table. Topping, a young lawyer,
Whitman Bunce, a man of leisure--unlimited leisure--and one or two
others, were rewarming some of the day's gossip.

“Had the gall to tell Bob's man he couldn't sleep in linen sheets; had
his own violet silk ones in his trunk, to match his pajamas. The goat
had 'em out and half on the bed when Bob came in and stopped him. Awful
row, I heard, when Mrs. Bob got on to it. He'll never go there again.”

“And I heard,” broke in Bunce, “that she ordered the trap and sent him
back to the station.”

Other bits drifted Jack's way:

“Why he was waiting at the stage-door and she slipped out somewhere in
front. Billy was with her, so I heard.... When they got to Delmonico's
there came near being a scrap.... No.... Never had a dollar on Daisy
Belle, or any other horse....”

Loud laughter was now heard at the end of the hall. A party of young
men had reached the foot of the stairs and were approaching Biffton and
Jack. Garry's merry voice led the others.

“Still hard at work, are you, Biffy? Why, hello, Jack!--how long have
you been here? Morlon, you know Mr. Breen, don't you?--Yes, of course
you do--new member--just elected. Get a move on that carcass of yours,
Biffy, and let somebody else get up to that table. Charles, take the
orders.”

Jack had shaken everybody's hand by this time, Biffton having moved back
a foot or two, and the circle had widened so that the poker party could
reach their cocktails. Garry extended his arm till his hand rested on
Jack's shoulder.

“Nothing sets me up like a game of poker, old man. Been on the building
all day. You ought to come up with me some time--I'll show you the
greatest piece of steel construction you ever saw. Mr. Morris was all
over it to-day. Oh, by the way! Did that old chunk of sandstone come up
to see you last night? What did you say his name was?”

Jack repeated Peter's cognomen--this time without rolling the syllables
under his tongue--said that Mr. Grayson had kept his promise; that the
evening had been delightful, and immediately changed the subject. There
was no use trying to convert Garry.

“And now tell me about the supper,” asked Jack.

“Oh, that was all right. We whooped it up till they closed the bar and
then went home with the milk. Had an awful head on me next morning;
nearly fell off the scaffold, I was so sleepy. How's Miss Corinne? I'm
going to stop in on my way uptown this afternoon and apologize to her.
I have her note, but I haven't had a minute to let her know why I didn't
come. I'll show her the ring; then she'll know why. Saw it, didn't you?”

Jack hadn't seen it. He had been too excited to look. Now he examined
it. With the flash of the gems Biffy sat up straight, and the others
craned their heads. Garry slipped it off his finger for the hundredth
time for similar inspections, and Jack utilized the pause in the
conversation to say that Corinne had received the note and that in reply
she had vented most of her disappointment on himself, a disclosure which
sent a cloud across Garry's face.

The cocktail hour had now arrived--one hour before dinner, an hour which
was fixed by that distinguished compounder of herbs and spirits, Mr.
Biffton--and the room began filling up. Most of the members were young
fellows but a few years out of college, men who renewed their Society
and club life within its walls; some were from out of town--students in
the various professions. Here and there was a man of forty--one even
of fifty-five--who preferred the gayer and fresher life of the younger
generation to the more solemn conclaves of the more exclusive clubs
further up and further down town. As is usual in such combinations, the
units forming the whole sought out their own congenial units and were
thereafter amalgamated into groups, a classification to be found in all
clubs the world over. While Biffy and his chums could always be found
together, there were other less-fortunate young fellows, not only
without coupon shears, but sometimes without the means of paying their
dues--who formed a little coterie of their own, and who valued and used
the club for what it brought them, their election carrying with it
a certain social recognition: it also widened one's circle of
acquaintances and, perhaps, of clients.

The sound of loud talking now struck upon Jack's ear. Something more
important than the angle of a parasol or the wearing of out-of-date
spats was engrossing the attention of a group of young men who had just
entered. Jack caught such expressions as--“Might as well have picked
his pocket....” “He's flat broke, anyhow....” “Got to sell his house, I
hear....”

Then came a voice louder than the others.

“There's Breen talking to Minott and Biffy. He's in the Street; he'll
know.... Say, Breen!”

Jack rose to his feet and met the speaker half way.

“What do you know, Breen, about that scoop in gold stock? Heard anything
about it? Who engineered it? Charley Gilbert's cleaned out, I hear.”

“I don't know anything,” said Jack. “I left the office at noon and came
up town. Who did you say was cleaned out?”

“Why, Charley Gilbert. You must know him.”

“Yes, I know him. What's happened to him?”

“Flat broke--that's what happened to him. Got caught in that gold
swindle. The stock dropped out of sight this afternoon, I hear--went
down forty points.”

Garry crowded his way into the group: “Which Mr. Gilbert?--not Charley
M., the--”

“Yes; Sam's just left him. What did he tell you, Sam?”

“Just what you've said--I hear, too, that he has got to stop on his
house out in Jersey. Can't finish it and can't pay for what's been
done.”

Garry gave a low whistle and looked at Jack.

“That's rough. Mr. Morris drew the plan of Gilbert's house himself. I
worked on the details.”

“Rough!” burst out the first speaker. “I should say it was--might as
well have burglared his safe. They have been working up this game for
months, so Charley told me. Then they gave out that the lode had petered
out and they threw it overboard and everybody with it. They said they
tried to find Charley to post him, but he was out of town.”

“Who tried?” asked Jack, with renewed interest, edging his way close to
the group. It was just as well to know the sheep from the goats, if he
was to spend the remainder of his life in the Street.

“That's what we want to know. Thought you might have heard.”

Jack shook his head and resumed his seat beside Biffy, who had not moved
or shown the slightest interest in the affair. Nobody could sell Biff
any gold stock--nor any other kind of stock. His came on the first of
every month in a check from the Trust Company.

For some moments Jack did not speak. He knew young Gilbert, and he knew
his young and very charming wife. He had once sat next to her at dinner,
when her whole conversation had been about this new home and the keen
interest that Morris, a friend of her father's, had taken in it. “Mr.
Breen, you and Miss Corinne must be among our earliest guests,” she had
said, at which Corinne, who was next to Garry, had ducked her little
head in acceptance. This was the young fellow, then, who had been caught
in one of the eddies whirling over the sunken rocks of the Street. Not
very creditable to his intelligence, perhaps, thought Jack; but, then,
again, who had placed them there, a menace to navigation?--and why?
Certainly Peter could not have known everything that was going on around
him, if he thought the effort of so insignificant an individual as
himself could be of use in clearing out obstructions like these.

Garry noticed the thoughtful expression settling over Jack's face, and
mistaking the cause called Charles to take the additional orders.

“Cheer up--try a high-ball, Jack. It's none of your funeral. You didn't
scoop Gilbert; we are the worst sufferers. Can't finish his house now,
and Mr. Morris is just wild over the design. It's on a ledge of rock
overlooking the lake, and the whole thing goes together. We've got the
roof on, and from across the lake it looks as if it had grown there. Mr.
Morris repeated the rock forms everywhere. Stunning, I tell you!”

Jack didn't want any high-ball, and said so. (Biffy didn't care if he
did.) The boy's mind was still on the scoop, particularly on the way in
which every one of his fellow-members had spoken of the incident.

“Horrid business, all of it. Don't you think so, Garry?” Jack said after
a pause.

“No, not if you keep your eyes peeled,” answered Garry, emptying his
glass. “Never saw Gilbert but once, and then he looked to me like a
softy from Pillowville. Couldn't fool me, I tell you, on a deal like
that. I'd have had a 'stop order' somewhere. Served Gilbert right; no
business to be monkeying with a buzz-saw unless he knew how to throw off
the belt.”

Jack straightened his shoulders and his brows knit. The lines of the
portrait were in the lad's face now.

“Well, maybe it's all right, Garry. My own opinion is that it's no
better than swindling. Anyway, I'm mighty glad Uncle Arthur isn't mixed
up in it. You heard what Sam and the other fellows thought, didn't you?
How would you like to have that said of you?”

Garry tossed back his head and laughed.

“Biffy, are you listening to his Reverence, the Bishop of Cumberland?
Here endeth the first lesson.”

Biff nodded over his high-ball. He wasn't listening--discussions of any
kind bored him.

“But what do you care, Jack, what they say--what anybody says?”
 continued Garry. “Keep right on. You are in the Street to make money,
aren't you? Everybody else is there for the same purpose. What goes up
must come down. If you don't want to get your head smashed, stand from
under. The game is to jump in, grab what you can, and jump out, dodging
the bricks as they come. Let's go up-town, old man.”

Neither of the young men was expressing his own views. Both were too
young and too inexperienced to have any fixed ideas on so vital a
subject.

It was the old fellow in the snuff-colored coat, black stock and
dog-eared collar that was behind Jack. If he were alive to-day Jack's
view would have been his view, and that was the reason why it was Jack's
view. The boy could no more explain it than he could prove why his eyes
were brown and his hair a dark chestnut, or why he always walked with
his toes very much turned out, or made gestures with his hands when he
talked. Had any of the jury been alive--and some of them were--or the
prosecuting-attorney, or even any one of the old settlers who attended
court, they could have told in a minute which one of the two young men
was Judge Breen's son. Not that Jack looked like his father. No young
man of twenty-two looks like an old fellow of sixty, but he certainly
moved and talked like him--and had the same way of looking at things.
“The written law may uphold you, sir, and the jury may so consider, but
I shall instruct them to disregard your plea. There is a higher law,
sir, than justice--a law of mercy--That I myself shall exercise.” The
old Judge had sat straight up on his bench when he said it, his face
cast-iron, his eyes burning. The jury brought in an acquittal without
leaving their seats. There was an outbreak, of course, but the man went
free. This young offshoot was from the same old stock, that was all;
same sap in his veins, same twist to his branch; same bud, same blossom
and--same fruit.

And Garry!

Not many years have elapsed since I watched him running in and out of
his father's spacious drawing-rooms on Fourteenth Street--the court
end of town in those days. In the days, I mean, when his father was
Collector of the Port, and his father's house with its high ceilings,
mahogany doors and wide hall, and the great dining-room overlooking a
garden with a stable in the rear. It had not been many years, I say,
since the Hon. Creighton Minott had thrown wide its doors to whoever
came--that is, whoever came properly accredited. It didn't last long,
of course. Politics changed; the “ins” became the “outs.” And with the
change came the bridging-over period--the kind of cantilever which hope
thrusts out from one side of the bank of the swift-flowing stream of
adversity in the belief that somebody on the other side of the chasm
will build the other half, and the two form a highway leading to a
change of scene and renewed prosperity.

The hospitable Collector continued to be hospitable. He had always
taken chances--he would again. The catch-terms of Garry's day, such as
“couldn't fool him,” “keep your eye peeled,” “a buzz-saw,” etc., etc.,
were not current in the father's day, but their synonyms were. He knew
what he was about. As soon as a particular member of the Board got back
from the other side the Honorable Collector would have the position
of Treasurer, and then it was only a question of time when he would be
President of the new corporation. I can see now the smile that lighted
up his rather handsome face when he told me. He was “monkeying with
a buzz-saw” all the same if he did but know it, and yet he always
professed to follow the metaphor that he could “throw off the belt” that
drove the pulley at his own good pleasure and so stop the connecting
machinery before the teeth of the whirling blade could reach his
fingers. Should it get beyond his control--of which there was not the
remotest possibility--he would, of course, rent his house, sell his
books and curtail. “In the meantime, my dear fellow, there is some of
the old Madeira left and a game of whist will only help to drive dull
care away.”

Garry never whimpered when the crash came. The dear mother died--how
patient and uncomplaining she was in all their ups and downs--and Garry
was all that was left. What he had gained since in life he had worked
for; first as office boy, then as draughtsman and then in charge of
special work, earning his Chief's approval, as the Scribe has duly
set forth. He got his inheritance, of course. Don't we all get ours?
Sometimes it skips a generation--some times two--but generally we are
wearing the old gentleman's suit of clothes cut down to fit our
small bodies, making believe all the time that they are our very own,
unconscious of the discerning eyes who recognize their cut and origin.

Nothing tangible, it is safe to say, came with Garry's share of the
estate--and he got it all. That is, nothing he could exchange for value
received--no houses or lots, or stocks or bonds. It was the INTANGIBLE
that proved his richest possession, viz.:--a certain buoyancy of
spirits; a cheery, optimistic view of life; a winning personality and
the power of both making and holding friends. With this came another
asset--the willingness to take chances, and still a third--an absolute
belief in his luck. Down at the bottom of the box littered with old
papers, unpaid tax bills and protested notes--all valueless--was
a fourth which his father used to fish out when every other asset
failed--a certain confidence in the turn of a card.

But the virtues and the peccadilloes of their ancestors, we may be sure,
were not interesting our two young men as they swung up the Avenue
arm in arm, this particular afternoon, the sidewalks crowded with the
fashion of the day, the roadway blocked with carriages. Nor did any
passing objects occupy their attention.

Garry's mind was on Corinne, and what he would tell her, and how she
would look as she listened, the pretty head tucked on one side, her
sparkling eyes drinking in every word of his story, although he knew she
wouldn't believe one-half of it. Elusive and irritating as she sometimes
was, there was really nobody exactly like Miss Corinne.

Jack's mind had resumed its normal tone. Garry's merry laugh and
good-natured ridicule had helped, so had the discovery that none of his
friends had had anything to do with Gilbert's fall. After all, he said
to himself, as he strode up the street beside his friend, it was “none
of his funeral,” none of his business, really. Such things went on every
day and in every part of the world. Neither was it his Uncle Arthur's.
That was the most comforting part of all.

Corinne's voice calling over the banisters: “Is that you, Jack?” met the
two young men as they handed their hats to the noiseless Frederick. Both
craned their necks and caught sight of the Wren's head framed by the
hand-rail and in silhouette against the oval sky-light in the roof
above.

“Yes, and Garry's here, too. Come down.”

The patter of little feet grew louder, then the swish of silken skirts,
and with a spring she was beside them.

“No, don't you say a word, Garry. I'm not going to listen and I won't
forgive you no matter what you say.” She had both of his hands now.

“Ah, but you don't know, Miss Corinne. Has Jack told you?”

“Yes, told me everything; that you had a big supper and everybody
stamped around the room; that Mr. Morris gave you a ring, or something”
 (Garry held up his finger, but she wasn't ready to examine it yet), “and
that some of the men wanted to celebrate it, and that you went to the
club and stayed there goodness knows how long--all night, so Mollie
Crane told me. Paul, her brother, was there--and you never thought a
word about your promise to me” (this came with a little pout, her chin
uplifted, her lips quite near his face), “and we didn't have half men
enough and our cotillion was all spoiled. I don't care--we had a lovely
time, even if you two men did behave disgracefully. No--I don't want
to listen to a thing. I didn't come down to see either of you.” (She had
watched them both from her window as they crossed the street.) “What I
want to know, Jack, is, who is Miss Felicia Grayson?”

“Why, Mr. Grayson's sister,” burst out Jack--“the old gentleman who came
to see me.”

“That old fellow!”

“Yes, that old fellow--the most charming--”

“Not that remnant!” interrupted Garry.

“No, Garry--not that kind of a man at all, but a most delightful old
gentleman by the name of Mr. Grayson,” and Jack's eyes flashed. “He told
me his sister was coming to town. What do you know about her, Corinne?”
 He was all excitement: Peter was to send for him when his sister
arrived.

“Nothing--that's why I ask you. I've just got a note from her. She says
she knew mamma when she lived in Washington, and that her brother
has fallen in love with you, and that she won't have another happy
moment--or something like that--if you and I don't come to a tea she
is giving to a Miss Ruth MacFarlane; and that I am to give her love to
mamma, and bring anybody I please with me.”

“When?” asked Jack. He could hardly restrain his joy.

“I think next Saturday--yes, next Saturday,” consulting the letter in
her hand.

“Where? At Mr. Grayson's rooms?” cried Jack.

“Yes, at her brother's, she says. Here, Jack--you read it. Some number
in East Fifteenth Street--queer place for people to live, isn't it,
Garry?--people who want anybody to come to their teas. I've got a
dressmaker lives over there somewhere; she's in Fifteenth Street,
anyhow, for I always drive there.”

Jack devoured the letter. This was what he had been hoping for. He knew
the old gentleman would keep his word!

“Well, of course you'll go, Corinne?” he cried eagerly.

“Of course I'll do nothing of the kind. I think it's a great piece
of impudence. I've never heard of her. Because you had her brother
upstairs, that's no reason why--But that's just like these people. You
give them an inch and--”

Jack's cheeks flushed: “But, Corinne! She's offered you a
courtesy--asked you to her house, and--”

“I don't care; I'm not going! Would you, Garry?”

The son of the Collector hesitated for a moment. He had his own ideas of
getting on in the world. They were not Jack's--his, he knew, would never
succeed. And they were not exactly Corinne's--she was too particular.
The fence was evidently the best place for him.

“Would be rather a bore, wouldn't it?” he replied evasively, with a
laugh. “Lives up under the roof, I guess, wears a dyed wig, got
Cousin Mary Ann's daguerreotype on the mantle, and tells you how Uncle
Ephraim--”

The door opened and Jack's aunt swept in. She never walked, or ambled,
or stepped jauntily, or firmly, or as if she wanted to get anywhere in
particular; she SWEPT in, her skirts following meekly behind--half a
yard behind, sometimes.

Corinne launched the inquiry at her mother, even before she could return
Garry's handshake. “Who's Miss Grayson, mamma?”

“I don't know. Why, my child?”

“Well, she says she knows you. Met you in Washington.”

“The only Miss Grayson I ever met in Washington, my dear, was an old
maid, the niece of the Secretary of State. She kept house for him after
his wife died. She held herself very high, let me tell you. A very grand
lady, indeed. But she must be an old woman now, if she is still living.
What did you say her first name was?”

Corinne took the open letter from Jack's hand. “Felicia... Yes,
Felicia.”

“And what does she want?--money for some charity?” Almost everybody
she knew, and some she didn't, wanted money for some charity. She was
loosening her cloak as she spoke, Frederick standing by to relieve my
lady of her wraps.

“No; she's going to give a tea and wants us all to come. She's the
sister of that old man who came to see Jack the other night, and--”

“Going to give a tea!--and the sister of--Well, then, she certainly
isn't the Miss Grayson I know. Don't you answer her, Corinne, until I
find out who she is.”

“I'll tell you who she is,” burst out Jack. His face was aflame now.
Never had he listened to such discourtesy. He could hardly believe his
ears.

“It wouldn't help me in the least, my dear Jack; so don't you begin. I
am the best judge of who shall come to my house. She may be all right,
and she may not, you can never tell in a city like New York, and you
can't be too particular. People really do such curious pushing things
now-a-days.” This to Garry. “Now serve tea, Parkins. Come in all of
you.”

Jack was on the point of blazing out in indignation over the false
position in which his friend had been placed when Peter's warning voice
rang in his ears. The vulgarity of the whole proceeding appalled him,
yet he kept control of himself.

“None for me, please, aunty,” he said quietly. “I will join you later,
Garry,” and he mounted the stairs to his room.



CHAPTER VIII



Peter was up and dressed when Miss Felicia arrived, despite the early
hour. Indeed that gay cavalier was the first to help the dear lady off
with her travelling cloak and bonnet, Mrs. McGuffey folding her veil,
smoothing out her gloves and laying them all upon the bed in the
adjoining room--the one she kept in prime order for Miss Grayson's use.

The old fellow was facing the coffee-urn when he told her Jack's story
and what he himself had said in reply, and how fine the boy was in
his beliefs, and how well-nigh impossible it was for him to help him,
considering his environment.

The dear lady had listened with her eyes fixed on Peter. It was but
another of his benevolent finds; it had been the son of an old music
teacher the winter before, and a boy struggling through college last
spring;--always somebody who wanted to get ahead in one direction or
another, no matter how impracticable his ambitions might be. This
young man, however, seemed different; certain remarks had a true ring.
Perhaps, after all, her foolish old brother--foolish when his heart
misled him--might have found somebody at last who would pay for the time
he spent upon him. The name, too, had a familiar sound. She was quite
sure the aunt must be the same rather over-dressed persistent young
widow who had flitted in and out of Washington society the last year of
her own stay in the capital. She had finally married a rich New York man
of the same name. So she had heard.

The tea to which Jack and Corinne were invited was the result of this
conversation. Trust Miss Felicia for doing the right thing and in the
right way, whatever her underlying purpose might be; and then again she
must look this new protege over.

Peter at once joined in the project. Nothing pleased him so much as
a function of any kind in which his dear sister was the centre of
attraction, and this was always the case. Was not Mrs. McGuffey put to
it, at these same teas, to know what to do with the hats and coats,
and the long and short cloaks and overshoes, and lots of other things
beside--umbrellas and the like--whenever Miss Felicia came to town? And
did not the good woman have many of the cards of the former function
hidden in her bureau drawer to show her curious friends just how grand
a lady Miss Felicia was? General Waterbury, U.S.A., commanding the
Department of the East, with headquarters at Governors Island, was one
of them. And so were Colonel Edgerton, Judge Lambert and Mrs. Lambert;
and His Excellency the French Ambassador, whom she had known as an
attache and who was passing through the city and had been overjoyed to
leave a card; as well as Sir Anthony Broadstairs, who expected to spend
a week with her in her quaint home in Geneseo, but who had made it
convenient to pay his respects in Fifteenth Street instead: to say
nothing of the Coleridges, Thomases, Bordeauxs and Worthingtons,
besides any number of people from Washington Square, with plenty more
from Murray Hill and beyond.

Peter in his enthusiasm had made a mental picture of a repetition of all
this and had already voiced it in the suggestion of these and various
other prominent names, when Miss Felicia stopped him with:

“No, Peter--No. It's not to be a museum of fossils, but a garden full of
rosebuds; nobody with a strand of gray hair will be invited. As for the
lame, the halt and the blind, they can come next week. I've just been
looking you over, Peter; you are getting old and wrinkled and pretty
soon you'll be as cranky as the rest of them, and there will be no
living with you. The Major, who is half your age”--I had come early, as
was my custom, to pay my respects to the dear woman--“is no better. You
are both of you getting into a rut. What you want is some young blood
pumped into your shrivelled veins. I am going to hunt up every girl I
know and all the boys, including that young Breen you are so wild over,
and then I'll send for dear Ruth MacFarlane, who has just come North
with her father to live, and who doesn't know a soul, and nobody over
twenty-five is to be admitted. So if you and the Major want to come to
Ruth's tea--Ruth's, remember; not yours or the Major's, or mine--you
will either have to pass the cake or take the gentlemen's hats. Do you
hear?”

We heard, and we heard her laugh as she spoke, raising her gold lorgnon
to her eyes and gazing at us with that half-quizzical look which so
often comes over her face.

She was older than Peter--must have been: I never knew exactly. It would
not have been wise to ask her, and nobody else knew but Peter, and he
never told. And yet there was no mark of real old age upon her. She and
Peter were alike in this. Her hair, worn Pompadour, was gray--an honest
black-and-white gray; her eyes were bright as needle points; the skin
slightly wrinkled, but fresh and rosy--a spare, straight, well-groomed
old lady of--perhaps sixty--perhaps sixty-five, depending on her dress,
or undress, for her shoulders were still full and well rounded. “The
most beautiful neck and throat, sir, in all Washington in her day,” old
General Waterbury once told me, and the General was an authority. “You
should have seen her in her prime, sir. What the devil the men were
thinking of I don't know, but they let her go back to Geneseo, and there
she has lived ever since. Why, sir, at a ball at the German Embassy she
made such a sensation that--” but then the General always tells such
stories of most of the women he knows.

There was but little left of that kind of beauty. She had kept her
figure, it is true--a graceful, easy moving figure, with the waist of a
girl; well-proportioned arms and small, dainty hands. She had kept,
too, her charm of manner and keen sense of humor--she wouldn't have
been Peter's sister otherwise--as well as her interest in her friend's
affairs, especially the love affairs of all the young people about her.

Her knowledge of men and women had broadened. She read them more easily
now than when she was a girl--had suffered, perhaps, by trusting them
too much. This had sharpened the tip end of her tongue to so fine a
point that when it became active--and once in a while it did--it could
rip a sham reputation up the back as easily as a keen blade loosens the
seams of a bodice.

Peter fell in at once with her plan for a “Rosebud Tea,” in spite of her
raillery and the threatened possibility of our exclusion, promising not
only to assist her with the invitations, but to be more than careful at
the Bank in avoiding serious mistakes in his balances--so as to be on
hand promptly at four. Moreover, if Jack had a sweetheart--and there
was no question of it, or ought not to be--and Corinne had another,
what would be better than bringing them all down together, so that Miss
Felicia could look them over, and Miss Ruth and the Major could get
better acquainted, especially Jack and Miss Felicia; and more especially
Jack and himself.

Miss Felicia's proposal having therefore been duly carried out, with
a number of others not thought of when the tea was first
discussed--including some pots of geraniums in the window, red, of
course, to match the color of Peter's room--and the freshening up of
certain swiss curtains which so offended Miss Felicia's ever-watchful
eyes that she burst out with: “It is positively disgraceful, Peter, to
see how careless you are getting--” At which Mrs. McGuffey blushed to
the roots of her hair, and washed them herself that very night before
she closed her eyes. The great day having arrived, I say the tea-table
was set with Peter's best, including “the dearest of silver teapots”
 that Miss Felicia had given him for special occasions; the table covered
with a damask cloth and all made ready for the arrival of her guests.
This done, the lady returned to her own room, from which she emerged
an hour later in a soft gray silk relieved by a film of old lace at her
throat, blending into the tones of her gray hair brushed straight up
from her forehead and worn high over a cushion, the whole topped by a
tiny jewel which caught the light like a drop of dew.

And a veritable grand dame she looked, and was, as she took her seat and
awaited the arrival of her guests--in bearing, in the way she moved her
head; in the way she opened her fan--in the selection of the fan itself,
for that matter. You felt it in the color and length of her gloves; the
size of her pearl ear rings (not too large, and yet not too small), in
the choice of the few rings that encircled her slender and now somewhat
shrunken fingers (one hoop of gold had a history that the old French
Ambassador could have told if he wanted to, so Peter once hinted to
me)--everything she did in fact betrayed a wide acquaintance with the
great world and its requirements and exactions.

Other women of her age might of their choice drop into charities, or
cats, or nephews and nieces, railing against the present and living
only in the past; holding on like grim death to everything that made
it respectable, so that they looked for all the world like so many old
daguerreotypes pulled from the frames. Not so Miss Felicia Grayson of
Geneseo, New York. Her past was a flexible, india-rubber kind of a past
that she stretched out after her. She might still wear her hair as she
did when the old General raved over her, although the frost of many
winters had touched it; but she would never hold on to the sleeves of
those days or the skirts or the mantles: Out or in they must go,
be puffed, cut bias, or made plain, just as the fashion of the day
insisted. Oh! a most level-headed, common-sense, old aristocrat was Dame
Felicia!

With the arrival of the first carriage old Isaac Cohen moved his seat
from the back to the front of his shop, so he could see everybody who
got out and went in, as well as everybody who walked past and gazed up
at the shabby old house and its shabbier steps and railings. Not that
the shabby surroundings ever made any difference whether the guests were
“carriage company” or not, to quote good Mrs. McGuffey. Peter would not
be Peter if he lived anywhere else, and Miss Felicia wouldn't be half
so quaint and charming if she had received her guests behind a marble
or brownstone front with an awning stretched to the curbstone and a
red velvet carpet laid across the sidewalk, the whole patrolled by a
bluecoat and two hired men.

The little tailor had watched many such functions before. So had the
neighbors, who were craning their heads from the windows. They all knew
by the carriages when Miss Felicia came to town and when she left, and
by the same token for that matter. The only difference between this
reception and former receptions, or teas, or whatever the great people
upstairs called them, was in the ages of the guests; not any gray
whiskers and white heads under high silk hats, this time; nor any demure
or pompous, or gentle, or, perhaps, faded old ladies puffing up Peter's
stairs--and they did puff before they reached his door, where they
handed their wraps to Mrs. McGuffey in her brave white cap and braver
white apron. Only bright eyes and rosy faces today framed in tiny bon
nets, and well-groomed young fellows in white scarfs and black coats.

But if anybody had thought of the shabby surroundings they forgot all
about it when they mounted the third flight of stairs and looked in
the door. Not only was Peter's bedroom full of outer garments, and
Miss Felicia's, too, for that matter--but the banisters looked like a
clothes-shop undergoing a spring cleaning, so thickly were the coats
slung over its hand rail. So, too, were the hall, and the hall chairs,
and the gas bracket, and even the hooks where Peter hung his clothes to
be brushed in the morning--every conceivable place, in fact, wherever
an outer wrap of any kind could be suspended, poked, or laid flat. That
Mrs. McGuffey was at her wits' end--only a short walk--was evident from
the way she grabbed my hat and coat and disappeared through a door which
led to her own apartments, returning a moment later out of breath and, I
fancied, a little out of temper.

And that was nothing to the way in which the owners of all these several
habiliments were wedged inside. First came the dome of Peter's bald head
surmounting his merry face, then the top of Miss Felicia's pompadour,
with its tiny diamond spark bobbing about as she laughed and moved
her head in saluting her guests and then mobs and mobs of young people
packed tight, looking for all the world like a matinee crowd leaving
a theatre (that is when you crane your neck to see over their heads),
except that the guests were without their wraps and were talking sixteen
to the dozen, and as merry as they could be.

“They are all here, Major,” Peter cried, dragging me inside. It was
wonderful how young and happy he looked. “Miss Corinne, and that loud
Hullaballoo, Garry Minott, we saw prancing around at the supper--you
remember--Holker gave him the ring.”

“And Miss MacFarlane?” I asked.

“Ruth! Turn your head, my boy, and take a look at her. Isn't she a
picture? Did you ever see a prettier girl in all your life, and one more
charmingly dressed? Ruth, this is the Major... nothing else... just the
Major. He is perfectly docile, kind and safe, and--”

“--And drives equally well in single or double harness, I suppose,”
 laughed the girl, extending her hand and giving me the slightest dip of
her head and bend of her back in recognition, no doubt, of my advancing
years and dignified bearing--in apology, too, perhaps, for her metaphor.

“In SINGLE--not double,” rejoined Peter. “He's the sourest, crabbedest
old bachelor in the world--except myself.”

Again her laugh bubbled out--a catching, spontaneous kind of laugh, as
if there were plenty more packed away behind her lips ready to break
loose whenever they found an opening.

“Then, Major, you shall have two lumps to sweeten you up,” and down went
the sugar-tongs into the silver bowl.

Here young Breen leaned forward and lifted the bowl nearer to her hand,
while I waited for my cup. He had not left her side since Miss
Felicia had presented him, so Peter told me afterward. I had evidently
interrupted a conversation, for his eyes were still fastened upon hers,
drinking in her every word and movement.

“And is sugar your cure for disagreeable people, Miss MacFarlane?” I
heard him ask under his breath as I stood sipping my tea.

“That depends on how disagreeable they are,” she answered. This came
with a look from beneath her eyelids.

“I must be all right, then, for you only gave me one lump--” still under
his breath.

“Only one! I made a mistake--” Eyes looking straight into Jack's, with a
merry twinkle gathering around their corners.

“Perhaps I don't need any at all.”

“Yes, I'm sure you do. Here--hold your cup, sir; I'll fill it full.”

“No, I'm going to wait and see what effect one lump has. I'm beginning
to get pleasant already--and I was cross as two sticks when I--”

And then she insisted he should have at least three more to make him at
all bearable, and he said there would be no living with him he would be
so charming and agreeable, and so the talk ran on, the battledoor and
shuttlecock kind of talk--the same prattle that we have all listened
to dozens of times, or should have listened to, to have kept our hearts
young. And yet not a talk at all; a play, rather, in which words count
for little and the action is everything: Listening to the toss of a curl
or the lowering of an eyelid; answering with a lift of the hand--such
a strong brown hand, that could pull an oar, perhaps, or help her over
dangerous places! Then her white teeth, and the way the head bent; and
then his ears and how close they lay to his head; and the short,
glossy hair with the faintest bit of a curl in it. And then the sudden
awakening: Oh, yes--it was the sugar Mr. Breen wanted, of course. What
was I thinking of?

And so the game went on, neither of them caring where the ball went so
that it could be hit again when it came their way.

When it was about to stay its flight I ventured in with the remark that
she must not forget to give my kindest and best to her good father. I
think she had forgotten I was standing so near.

“And you know daddy!” she cried--the real girl was shining in her eyes
now--all the coquetry had vanished from her face.

“Yes--we worked together on the piers of the big bridge over the
Delaware; oh, long ago.”

“Isn't he the very dearest? He promised to come here today, but I know
he won't. Poor daddy, he gets home so tired sometimes. He has just
started on the big tunnel and there is so much to do. I have been
helping him with his papers every night. But when Aunt Felicia's note
came--she isn't my real aunt, you know, but I have called her so ever
since I was a little girl--daddy insisted on my coming, and so I have
left him for just a few days. He will be so glad when I tell him I have
met one of his old friends.” There was no question of her beauty, or
poise, or her naturalness.

“Been a lady all her life, my dear Major, and her mother before her,”
 Miss Felicia said when I joined her afterward, and Miss Felicia knew.
“She is not like any of the young girls about, as you can see for
yourself. Look at her now,” she whispered, with an approving nod of her
head.

Again my eyes sought the girl. The figure was willowy and graceful; the
shoulders sloping, the arms tapering to the wrists. The hair was jet
black--“Some Spanish blood somewhere,” I suggested, but the dear lady
answered sharply, “Not a drop; French Huguenot, my dear Major, and I am
surprised you should have made such a mistake.” This black hair parted
in the middle, lay close to her head--such a wealth and torrent of it;
even with tucking it behind her ears and gathering it in a coil in her
neck it seemed just ready to fall. The face was oval, the nose perfect,
the mouth never still for an instant, so full was it of curves and
twinkles and little quivers; the eyes big, absorbing, restful, with lazy
lids that lifted slowly and lay motionless as the wings of a resting
butterfly, the eyebrows full and exquisitely arched. Had you met her in
mantilla and high-heeled shoes, her fan half shading her face, you would
have declared, despite Miss Felicia's protest, that only the click of
the castanets was needed to send her whirling to their rhythm. Had she
tied that same mantilla close under her lovely chin, and passed you with
upturned eyes and trembling lips, you would have sworn that the Madonna
from the neighboring church had strayed from its frame in search of the
helpless and the unhappy; and had none of these disguises been hers, and
she had flashed by you in the open some bright morning mounted on her
own black mare, face aglow, eyes like stars, her wonderful hair waving
in the wind, you would have stood stock-still in admiration, fear
gripping your throat, a prayer in your heart for the safe home-coming of
one so fearless and so beautiful.

There was, too, about her a certain gentleness, a certain disposition
to be kind, even when her inherent coquetry--natural in the Southern
girl--led her into deep waters; a certain tenderness that made friends
of even unhappy suitors (and I heard that she could not count them on
her fingers) who had asked for more than she could give--a tenderness
which healed the wound and made lovers of them all for life.

And then her Southern speech, indescribable and impossible in cold type.
The softening of the consonants, the slipping away of the terminals, the
slurring of vowels, and all in that low, musical voice born out side of
the roar and crash of city streets and crowded drawing-rooms with each
tongue fighting for mastery.

All this Jack had taken in, besides a thousand other charms visible only
to the young enthusiast, before he had been two minutes in her presence.
As to her voice, he knew she was one of his own people when she had
finished pronouncing his name. Somebody worthwhile had crossed his path
at last!

And with this there had followed, even as he talked to her, the usual
comparisons made by all young fellows when the girl they don't like is
placed side by side with the girl they do. Miss MacFarlane was tall
and Corinne was short; Miss MacFarlane was dark, and he adored dark,
handsome people--and Corinne was light; Miss MacFarlane's voice was low
and soft, her movements slow and graceful, her speech gentle--as if she
were afraid she might hurt someone inadvertently; her hair and dress
were simple to severity. While Corinne--well, in every one of these
details Corinne represented the exact opposite. It was the blood! Yes,
that was it--it was her blood! Who was she, and where did she come from?
Would Corinne like her? What impression would this high bred Southern
beauty make upon the pert Miss Wren, whose little nose had gone down a
point or two when her mother had discovered, much to her joy, the week
before, that it was the REAL Miss Grayson and not an imitation Miss
Grayson who had been good enough to invite her daughter and any of her
daughter's friends to tea; and it had fallen another point when she
learned that Miss Felicia had left her card the next day, expressing to
the potato-bug how sorry she was to hear that the ladies were out, but
that she hoped it would only be a matter of a few days before “she
would welcome them” to her own apartments, or words to that effect,
Frederick's memory being slightly defective.

It was in answer to this request that Mrs. Breen, after consulting
her husband, had written three acceptances before she was willing that
Frederick should leave it with his own hands in Fifteenth Street--one
beginning, “It certainly is a pleasure after all these years”--which
was discarded as being too familiar; another, “So good of you, dear
Miss Grayson,” which had a similar fate; and the third, which ran, “My
daughter will be most happy, dear Miss Grayson, to be with you,” etc.,
which was finally sealed with the Breen crest--a four-legged beastie of
some kind on its hind legs, with a motto explanatory of the promptness
of his ancestors in times of danger. Even then Corinne had hesitated
about accepting until Garry said: “Well, let's take it in, anyhow--we
can skip out if they bore us stiff.”

Knowing these things, therefore, and fearing that after all something
would happen to mar the pleasant relations he had established with
Peter, and with the honor of his uncle's family in his keeping, so
to speak, Jack had awaited the arrival of Corinne and Garry with
considerable trepidation. What if, after all, they should stay
away, ignoring the great courtesy which this most charming of old
ladies--never had he seen one so lovable or distinguished--had extended
to them; and she a stranger, too, and all because her brother Peter had
asked her to be kind to a boy like himself.

The entrance of Corinne and Garry, therefore, into the crowded room half
an hour after his own had brought a relief to Jack's mind (he had
been watching the door, so as to be ready to present them), which Miss
Felicia's gracious salutation only intensified.

“I remember your dear mother perfectly,” he heard the old lady say as
she advanced to Corinne and took both her hands. “And she was quite
lovely. And this I am very sure is Mr. Breen's friend, Mr. Minott, who
has carried off all the honors. I am delighted to see you both. Peter,
do you take these dear young people and present them to Ruth.”

The two had thereupon squeezed through to Ruth's side; Peter in his
formal introduction awarding to Garry all the honors to which he was
entitled, and then Ruth, remembering her duties, said how glad she was
to know them; and would they have lemon or sugar?--and Corinne, with a
comprehensive glance of her rival, declined both, her excuse being that
she was nearly dead now with the heat and that a cup of tea would finish
her. Jack had winced when his ears caught the flippant answer, but
it was nothing to the way in which he shrivelled up when Garry, after
shaking Miss MacFarlane's hand as if it had been a pump-handle instead
of a thing so dainty that no boy had a right to touch it except with
reverence in his heart, had burst out with: “Glad to see you. From the
South, I hear--” as if she was a kangaroo or a Fiji Islander. He had
seen Miss MacFarlane give a little start at Garry's familiar way of
speaking, and had noticed how Ruth shrank behind the urn as if she
were afraid he would touch her again, although she had laughed quite
good-naturedly as she answered:

“Not very far South; only from Maryland,” and had then turned to Jack
and continued her talk with the air of one not wishing to be further
interrupted.

The Scribe does not dare to relate what would have become of one so
sensitive as our hero could he have heard the discussion going on later
between the two young people when they were backed into one of Peter's
bookcases and stood surveying the room. “Miss MacFarlane isn't at all my
kind of a girl,” Corinne had declared to Garry. “Really, I can't see why
the men rave over her. Pretty?--yes, sort of so-so; but no style, and
SUCH clothes! Fancy wearing a pink lawn and a sash tied around her waist
like a girl at a college commencement--and as to her hair--why no one
has ever THOUGHT of dressing her hair that way for AGES and AGES.”

Her mind thus relieved, my Lady Wren had made a survey of the rooms,
wondering what they wanted with so many funny old portraits, and whether
the old gentleman or his sister read the dusty books, Garry remarking
that there were a lot of “swells” among the young fellows, many of whom
he had heard of but had never met before. This done, the two wedged
their way out, without ever troubling Peter or Miss Felicia with their
good-bys, Garry telling Corinne that the old lady wouldn't know they
were gone, and Corinne adding under her breath that it didn't make any
difference to her if she did.



CHAPTER IX



But Jack stayed on.

This was the atmosphere he had longed for. This, too, was where Peter
lived. Here were the chairs he sat in, the books he read, the pictures
he enjoyed. And the well-dressed, well-bred people, the hum of low
voices, the clusters of roses, the shaded candles, their soft rosy light
falling on the egg-shell cups and saucers and silver service, and the
lovely girl dispensing all this hospitality and cheer! Yes, here he
could live, breathe, enjoy life. Everything was worth while and just as
he had expected to find it.

When the throng grew thick about her table he left Ruth's side, taking
the opportunity to speak to Peter or Miss Felicia (he knew few others),
but he was back again whenever the chance offered.

“Don't send me away again,” he pleaded when he came back for the
twentieth time, and with so much meaning in his voice that she looked at
him with wide-open eyes. It was not what he said--she had been brought
up on that kind of talk--it was the way he said it, and the inflection
in his voice.

“I have been literally starving for somebody like you to talk to,” he
continued, drawing up a stool and settling himself determinedly beside
her.

“For me! Why, Mr. Breen, I'm not a piece of bread--” she laughed. “I'm
just girl.” He had begun to interest her--this brown-eyed young fellow
who wore his heart on his sleeve, spoke her dialect and treated her as
if she were a duchess.

“You are life-giving bread to me, Miss MacFarlane,” answered Jack with a
smile. “I have only been here six months; I am from the South, too.” And
then the boy poured out his heart, telling her, as he had told Peter,
how lonely he got sometimes for some of his own kind; and how the young
girl in the lace hat and feathers, who had come in with Garry, was his
aunt's daughter; and how he himself was in the Street, signing checks
all day--at which she laughed, saying in reply that nothing would give
her greater pleasure than a big book with plenty of blank checks--she
had never had enough, and her dear father had never had enough, either.
But he omitted all mention of the faro bank and of the gamblers--such
things not being proper for her ears, especially such little pink shells
of ears, nestling and half hidden in her beautiful hair.

There was no knowing how long this absorbing conversation might have
continued (it had already attracted the attention of Miss Felicia) had
not a great stir taken place at the door of the outside hall. Somebody
was coming upstairs; or had come upstairs; somebody that Peter was
laughing with--great, hearty laughs, which showed his delight; somebody
that made Miss Felicia raise her head and listen, a light breaking over
her face. Then Peter's head was thrust in the door:

“Here he is, Felicia. Come along, Holker--I have been wondering--”

“Been wondering what, Peter? That I'd stay away a minute longer than I
could help after this dear lady had arrived?... Ah, Miss Felicia! Just
as magnificent and as young as ever. Still got that Marie Antoinette
look about you--you ought really--”

“Stop that nonsense, Holker, right away,” she cried, advancing a step to
greet him.

“But it's all true, and--”

“Stop, I tell you; none of your sugar-coated lies. I am seventy if I am
a day, and look it, and if it were not for these furbelows I would look
eighty. Now tell me about yourself and Kitty and the boys, and whether
the Queen has sent you the Gold Medal yet, and if the big Library is
finished and--”

“Whew! what a cross examination. Wait--I'll draw up a set of
specifications and hand them in with a new plan of my life.”

“You will do nothing of the kind! You will draw up a chair--here, right
alongside of me, and tell me about Kitty and--No, Peter, he is not going
to be taken over and introduced to Ruth for at least five minutes. Peter
has fallen in love with her, Holker, and I do not blame him. One of
these young fellows--there he is still talking to her--hasn't left her
side since he put his eyes on her. Now begin--The Medal?--

“Expected by next steamer.”

“The Corn Exchange?”

“All finished but the inside work.”

“Kitty?”

“All finished but the outside work.”

Miss Felicia looked up. “Your wife, I mean, you stupid fellow.”

“Yes, I know. She would have come with me but her dress didn't arrive in
time.”

Miss Felicia laughed: “And the boys?”

“Still in Paris--buying bric-a-brac and making believe they're studying
architecture and--But I'm not going to answer another question.
Attention! Miss Felicia Grayson at the bar!”

The dear lady straightened her back, her face crinkling with merriment.

“Present!” she replied, drawing down the corners of her mouth.

“When did you leave home? How long will you stay? Can you come to
dinner--you and Methusaleh--on Wednesday night?”

“I refuse to answer by advice of counsel. As to coming to dinner, I
am not going anywhere for a week--then I am coming to you and Kitty,
whether it is Wednesday or any other night. Now, Peter, take him away.
He's so puffed up with his Gold Medal he's positively unbearable.”

All this time Jack had been standing beside Ruth. He had heard the stir
at the door and had seen Holker join Miss Felicia, and while the
talk between the two lasted he had interspersed his talk to Ruth with
accounts of the supper, and Garry's getting the ring, to which was added
the boy's enthusiastic tribute to the architect himself. “The greatest
man I have met yet,” he said in his quick, impulsive way. “We don't
have any of them down our way. I never saw one--nobody ever did. Here he
comes with Mr. Grayson. I hope you will like him.”

Ruth made a movement as if to start to her feet. To sit still and look
her best and attend to her cups and hot water and tiny wafers was all
right for men like Jack, but not with distinguished men like Mr. Morris.

Morris had his hand on her chair before she could move it back.

“No, my dear young lady--you'll please keep your seat. I've been
watching you from across the room and you make too pretty a picture as
you are. Tea?--Not a drop.”

“Oh, but it is so delicious--and I will give you the very biggest piece
of lemon that is left.”

“No--not a drop; and as to lemon--that's rank poison to me. You should
have seen me hobbling around with gout only last week, and all because
somebody at a reception, or tea, or some such plaguey affair, made me
drink a glass of lemonade. Give it to this aged old gentleman--it will
keep him awake. Here, Peter!”

Up to this moment no word had been addressed to Jack, who stood outside
the half circle waiting for some sign of recognition from the great man;
and a little disappointed when none came. He did not know that one of
the great man's failings was his forgetting the names even of those of
his intimate friends--such breaks as “Glad to see you--I remember you
very well, and very pleasantly, and now please tell me your name,” being
a common occurrence with the great architect--a failing that everybody
pardoned.

Peter noticed the boy's embarrassment and touched Morris' arm.

“You remember Mr. Breen, don't you, Holker? He was at your supper that
night--and sat next to me.”

Morris whirled quickly and held out his hand, all his graciousness in
his manner.

“Yes, certainly. You took the ring to Minott, of course. Very glad to
meet you again--and what did you say his name was, Peter?” This in the
same tone of voice--quite as if Jack were miles away.

“Breen--John Breen,” answered Peter, putting his arm on Jack's shoulder,
to accentuate more clearly his friendship for the boy.

“All the better, Mr. John Breen--doubly glad to see you, now that I know
your name. I'll try not to forget it next time. Breen! Breen! Peter,
where have I heard that name before? Breen--where the devil have I--Oh,
yes--I've got it now. Quite a common name, isn't it?”

Jack assured him with a laugh that it was; there were more than a
hundred in the city directory. He wasn't offended at Morris forgetting
his name, and wanted him to see it.

“Glad to know it; wouldn't like to think you were mixed up in the
swindle. You ought to thank your stars, my dear fellow, that you got
into architecture instead of into Wall--”

“But I am in--”

“Yes, I know--you're with Hunt--” (another instance of a defective
memory) “and you couldn't be with a better man--the best in the
profession, really. I'm talking of some scoundrels of your name--Breen
& Co., the firm is--who, I hear, have cheated one of my clients--young
Gilbert--fine fellow--just married--persuaded him to buy some gold
stock--Mukton Lode, I think they called it--and robbed him of all he
has. He must stop on his house I hear. And now, my dear Miss--” here he
turned to the young girl--“I really forget--”

“Ruth,” she answered with a smile. She had taken Morris's measure and
had already begun to like him as much as Jack did.

“Yes--Miss Ruth--Now, please, my dear girl, keep on being young and very
beautiful and very wholesome, for you are every one of these things, and
I know you'll forgive me for saying so when I tell you that I have two
strapping young fellows for sons who are almost old enough to make love
to you. Come, Peter, show me that copy of Tacitus you wrote me about.
Is it in good condition?” They were out of Jack's hearing now, Morris
adding, “Fine type of Southern beauty, Peter. Big design, with broad
lines everywhere. Good, too--good as gold. Something about her forehead
that reminds me of the Italian school. Looks as if Bellini might have
loved her. Hello, Major! What are you doing here all by yourself?”

Jack stood transfixed!

Horror, anger, humiliation over the exposure (it was unheard, if he had
but known it, by anyone in the room except Peter and himself) rushed
over him in hot concurrent waves. It was his uncle, then, who had
robbed young Gilbert! The Mukton Lode! He had handled dozens of the
certificates, just as he had handled dozens of others, hardly glancing
at the names. He remembered overhearing some talk one day in which his
uncle had taken part. Only a few days before he had sent a bundle of
Mukton certificates to the transfer office of the company.

Then a chill struck him full in the chest and he shivered to his
finger-tips. Had Ruth heard?--and if she had heard, would she
understand? In his talk he had given her his true self--his standards
of honor--his beliefs in what was true and worth having. When she knew
all--and she must know--would she look upon him as a fraud? That his
uncle had been accused of a shrewd scoop in the Street did not make his
clerk a thief, but would she see the difference?

All these thoughts surged through his mind as he stood looking into
her eyes, her hand in his while he made his adieux. He had determined,
before Morris fired the bomb which shattered his hopes, to ask if he
might see her again, and where, and if there could be found no place
fitting and proper, she being motherless and Miss Felicia but a
chaperon, to write her a note inviting her to walk up through the Park
with him, and so on into the open where she really belonged. All this
was given up now. The best thing for him was to take his leave as
quietly as possible, without committing her to anything--anything which
he felt sure she would repudiate as soon as she learned--if she did not
know already--how undesirable an acquaintance John Breen, of Breen &
Co., was, etc.

As to his uncle's share in the miserable transaction, there was but one
thing to do--to find out, and from his own lips, if possible, if the
story were true, and if so to tell him exactly what he thought of Breen
& Co. and the business in which they were engaged. Peter's advice was
good, and he wished he could follow it, but here was a matter in which
his honor was concerned. When this side of the matter was presented to
Mr. Grayson he would commend him for his course of action. To think that
his own uncle should be accused of a transaction of this kind--his own
uncle and a Breen! Could anything be more horrible!

So sudden was his departure from the room--just “I must go now; I'm so
grateful to you all for asking me, and I've had such a good--Good-by--”
 that Miss Felicia looked after him in astonishment, turning to Peter
with:

“Why, what's the matter with the boy? I wanted him to dine with us. Did
you say anything to him, Peter, to hurt his feelings?”

Peter shook his head. Morris, he knew, was the unconscious culprit, but
this was not for his sister's or Ruth's ears--not, at least, until he
could get at the exact facts for himself.

“He is as sensitive as a plant,” continued Peter; “he closes all up at
times. But he is genuine, and he is sincere--that's better than poise,
sometimes.”

“Well, then, maybe Ruth has offended him,” suggested Miss Felicia.
“No--she couldn't. Ruth, what have you done to young Mr. Breen?”

The girl threw back her head and laughed.

“Nothing.”

“Well, he went off as if he had been shot from a gun. That is not like
him at all, I should say, from what I have seen of him. Perhaps I should
have looked after him a little more. I tried once, but I could not get
him away from you. His manner is really charming when he talks, and he
is so natural and so well bred; not at all like his friend, of whom he
seems to think so much. How did you like him, dear Ruth?”

“Oh, I don't know.” She knew, but she didn't intend to tell anybody.
“He's very shy and--”

“--And very young.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“And very much of a gentleman,” broke in Peter in a decided tone. None
should misunderstand the boy if he could help it.

Again Ruth laughed. Neither of them had touched the button which had
rung up her sympathy and admiration.

“Of course he is a gentleman. He couldn't be anything else. He is from
Maryland, you know.”



CHAPTER X



Reference has been made in these pages to a dinner to be given in the
house of Breen to various important people, and to which Mr. Peter
Grayson, the honored friend of the distinguished President of the
Clearing House, was to be invited. The Scribe is unable to say whether
the distinguished Mr. Grayson received an invitation or not. Breen may
have thought better of it, or Jack may have discouraged it after closer
acquaintance with the man who had delighted his soul as no other man
except his father had ever done--but certain it is that he was not
present, and equally certain is it that the distinguished Mr. Portman
was, and so were many of the directors of the Mukton Lode, not to
mention various others--capitalists whose presence would lend dignity to
the occasion and whose names and influence would be of inestimable value
to the future of the corporation.

As fate would have it the day for assuaging the appetites of these
financial magnates was the same that Miss Felicia had selected for her
tea to Ruth, and the time at which they were to draw up their chairs but
two hours subsequent to that in which Jack, crushed and humiliated by
his uncle's knavery, had crept downstairs and into the street.

In this frame of mind the poor boy had stopped at the Magnolia in the
hope of finding Garry, who must, he thought, have left Corinne at home,
and then retraced his steps to the club. He must explode somewhere and
with someone, and the young architect was the very man he wanted. Garry
had ridiculed his old-fashioned ideas and had advised him to let himself
go. Was the wiping out of Gilbert's fortune part of the System? he asked
himself.

As he hunted through the rooms, almost deserted at this hour, his eyes
searching for his friend, a new thought popped into his head, and with
such force that it bowled him over into a chair, where he sat staring
straight in front of him. Tonight, he suddenly remembered, was the
night of the dinner his uncle was to give to some business friends--“A
Gold-Mine Dinner,” his aunt had called it. His cheeks flamed again when
he thought that these very men had helped in the Mukton swindle. To
interrupt them, though, at their feast--or even to mention the subject
to his uncle while the dinner was in progress--was, of course, out of
the question. He would stay where he was; dine alone, unless Garry came
in, and then when the last man had left his uncle's house he would have
it out with him.

Biffton was the only man who disturbed his solitude. Biffy was in full
evening dress--an enormous white carnation in his button-hole and a
crush hat under his arm. He was booked for a “Stag,” he said with
a yawn, or he would stay and keep him company. Jack didn't want any
company--certainly not Biffy--most assuredly not any of the young
fellows who had asked him about Gilbert's failure. What he wanted was
to be left alone until eleven o'clock, during which time he would get
something to eat.

Dinner over, he buried himself in a chair in the library and let his
mind roam. Angry as he was, Ruth's image still haunted him. How pretty
she was--how gracefully she moved her arm as she lifted the cups;
and the way the hair waved about her temples; and the tones of her
voice--and dear Peter, so kind and thoughtful of him, so careful that he
should be introduced to this and that person; and Miss Felicia! What a
great lady she was; and yet he was not a bit afraid of her. What would
they all think of him when the facts of his uncle's crime came to their
ears, and they MUST come sooner or later. What, too, would Peter think
of him for breaking out on his uncle, which he firmly intended to do as
soon as the hour hand reached eleven? Nor would he mince his words. That
an outrage of this kind could be committed on an unsuspecting man was
bad enough, but that it should have taken place in his own uncle's
office, bringing into disrepute his father's and his own good name, was
something he could not tolerate for a moment. This he intended saying to
his uncle in so many plain words; and so leaving our hero with his
soul on fire, his mind bent on inflammables, explosives,
high-pressures--anything in fact that once inserted under the solid body
of the senior Breen would blow that gentleman into space--we will betake
ourselves to his palatial home. The dinner being an important one, no
expense had been spared.

All day long boys in white aprons had sprung from canvas-covered wagons,
dived in Arthur Breen's kitchen and dived out again after depositing
various eatables, drinkables and cookables--among them six pair
of redheads, two saddles of mutton, besides such uncanny things as
mushrooms, truffles and the like, all of which had been turned over to
the chef, who was expressly engaged for the occasion, and whose white
cap--to quote Parkins--“Gives a hair to the scullery which reminded
him more of 'ome than anything 'e 'ad seen since 'e left 'is lordship's
service.”

Upstairs more wonderful things had been done. The table of the
sepulchral dining-room was transformed into a bed of tulips, the mantel
a parterre of flowers, while the sideboard, its rear packed with the
family silver, was guarded by a row of bottles of various sizes, shapes
and colors; various degrees of cob webbed shabbiness, too--containing
the priceless vintages which the senior member of the firm of Breen &
Co. intended to set before his friends.

Finally, as the dinner hour approached, all the gas jets were ablaze;
not only the side lights in the main hall, and the overhead lantern
which had shed its rays on Peter's bald head, but the huge glass
chandelier hung in the middle of the satin-upholstered drawing room, as
well as the candelabra on the mantel with their imitation wax candles
and brass wicks--everything, in fact, that could add to the brilliancy
of the occasion.

All this, despite the orderly way in which the millionaire's house was
run, had developed a certain nervous anxiety in the host himself, the
effect of which had not yet worn off, although but a few minutes would
elapse before the arrival of the guests. This was apparent in the
rise and fall of Breen's heels, as he seesawed back and forth on the
hearth-rug in the satin-lined drawing-room, with his coattails spread to
the lifeless grate, and from the way he glanced nervously at the mirror
to see that his cravat was properly tied and that his collar did not
ride up in the back.

The only calm person in the house was the ex-widow. With the eyes of a
major-general sweeping the field on the eve of an important battle, she
had taken in the disposition of the furniture, the hang of the curtains
and the placing of the cushions and lesser comforts. She had also
arranged with her own hands the masses of narcissus and jonquils on the
mantels, and had selected the exact shade of yellow tulips which centred
the dining-room table. It was to be a “Gold-Mine Dinner,” so Arthur had
told her, “and everything must be in harmony.”

Then seeing Parkins, who had entered unexpectedly and caught her in the
act (it is bad form for a hostess to arrange flowers in some houses--the
butler does that), she asked in an indifferent tone: “And how many are
we to have for dinner, Parkins?” She knew, of course, having spent an
hour over a diagram placing the guests.

“Fourteen, my lady.”

“Fourteen!--really, quite a small affair.” And with the air of one
accustomed all her life to banquets in palaces of state, she swept out
of the room.

The only time she betrayed herself was just before the arrival of the
guests, when her mind reverted to her daughter.

“The Portmans are giving a ball next week, Arthur, and I want Corinne to
go. Are you sure he is coming?”

“Don't worry, Kitty, Portman's coming; and so are the Colonel, and
Crossbin, and Hodges, and the two Chicago directors, and Mason, and a
lot more. Everybody's coming, I tell you. If Mukton Lode doesn't sit up
and take notice with a new lease of life after tonight, I'm a Dutchman.
Run, there's the bell.”

The merciful Scribe will spare the reader the details incident upon
the arrival of the several guests. These dinners are all alike: the
announcements by the butler; the passing of the cocktails on a
wine tray; the standing around until the last man has entered the
drawing-room; the perfunctory talk--the men who have met before
hobnobbing instantly with each other, the host bearing the brunt of the
strangers; the saunter into the dining-room, the reading of cards,
and the “Here you are, Mr. Portman, right alongside Mr. Hodges. And
Crossbin, you are down there somewhere”; the spreading of napkins and
squaring of everybody's elbow as each man drops into his seat.

Neither will the reader be told of the various dishes or their
garnishings. These pages have so far been filled with little else beside
eating and drinking, and with reason, too, for have not all the great
things in life been begun over some tea-table, carried on at a luncheon,
and completed between the soup and the cordials? Kings, diplomats
and statesmen have long since agreed that for baiting a trap there is
nothing like a soup, an entree and a roast, the whole moistened by a
flagon of honest wine. The bait varies when the financier or promoter
sets out to catch a capitalist, just as it does when one sets out to
catch a mouse, and yet the two mammals are much alike--timid, on

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