“I can't speak in regard to pain and anguish,” said Davenport. “I've experienced both, of course, but not so as to learn their effect on women. But suppose, if you can, a woman who should look kindly on an undeserving, but not ill-meaning, individual like myself. Suppose that, after a time, she happened to hear of the reputation of bad luck that clung to him. What would she do then?”
“Undertake to be his mascot, I suppose, and neutralize the evil influence,” replied Larcher, laughingly.
“Well, if I were to predict on my own experience, I should say she would take flight as fast as she could, to avoid falling under the evil influence herself. The man would never hear of her again, and she would doubtless live happy ever after.”
For the first time in the conversation, Davenport sighed, and the faintest cloud of bitterness showed for a moment on his face.
“And the man, perhaps, would 'bury himself in his books,'” said Larcher, looking around the room; he made show to treat the subject gaily, lest he might betray his inquisitive purpose.
“Yes, to some extent, though the business of making a bare living takes up a good deal of time. You observe the signs of various occupations here. I have amused myself a little in science, too,—you see the cabinet over there. I studied medicine once, and know a little about surgery, but I wasn't fitted—or didn't care—to follow that profession in a money-making way.”
“You are exceedingly versatile.”
“Little my versatility has profited me. Which reminds me of business. When are these illustrations to be ready, Mr. Larcher? And how many are wanted? I'm afraid I've been wasting your time.”
In their brief talk about the task, Larcher, with the private design of better acquaintance, arranged that he should accompany the artist to certain riverside localities described in the text. Business details settled, Larcher observed that it was about dinnertime, and asked:
“Have you any engagement for dining?”
“No,” said Davenport, with a faint smile at the notion.
“Then you must dine with me. I hate to eat alone.”
“Thank you, I should be pleased. That is to say—it depends on where you dine.”
“Wherever you like. I dine at restaurants, and I'm not faithful to any particular one.”
“I prefer to dine as Addison preferred,—on one or two good things well cooked, and no more. Toiling through a ten-course table d'hôte menu is really too wearisome—even to a man who is used to weariness.”
“Well, I know a place—Giffen's chop-house—that will just suit you. As a friend of mine, Barry Tompkins, says, it's a place where you get an unsurpassable English mutton-chop, a perfect baked potato, a mug of delicious ale, and afterward a cup of unexceptionable coffee. He says that, when you've finished, you've dined as simply as a philosopher and better than most kings; and the whole thing comes to forty-five cents.”
“I know the place, and your friend is quite right.”
Davenport took up a soft felt hat and a plain stick with a curved handle. When the young men emerged from the gloomy hallway to the street, which in that part was beginning to be shabby, the street lights were already heralding the dusk. The two hastened from the region of deteriorating respectability to the grandiose quarter westward, and thence to Broadway and the clang of car gongs. The human crowd was hurrying to dinner.
“What a poem a man might write about Broadway at evening!” remarked Larcher.
Davenport replied by quoting, without much interest:
'The shadows lay along Broadway, 'Twas near the twilight tide—And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride.'
“Poe praised those lines,” he added. “But it was a different Broadway that Willis wrote them about.”
“Yes,” said Larcher, “but in spite of the skyscrapers and the incongruities, I love the old street. Don't you?”
“I used to,” said Davenport, with a listlessness that silenced Larcher, who fell into conjecture of its cause. Was it the effect of many failures? Or had it some particular source? What part in its origin had been played by the woman to whose fickleness the man had briefly alluded? And, finally, had the story behind it anything to do with Edna Hill's reasons for seeking information?
Pondering these questions, Larcher found himself at the entrance to the chosen dining-place. It was a low, old-fashioned doorway, on a level with the sidewalk, a little distance off Broadway. They were just about to enter, when they heard Davenport's name called out in a nasal, overbearing voice. A look of displeasure crossed Davenport's brow, as both young men turned around. A tall, broad man, with a coarse, red face; a man with hard, glaring eyes and a heavy black mustache; a man who had intruded into a frock coat and high silk hat, and who wore a large diamond in his tie; a man who swung his arms and used plenty of the surrounding space in walking, as if greedy of it,—this man came across the street, and, with an air of proprietorship, claimed Murray Davenport's attention.
“I want you,” bawled the gentleman with the diamond, like a rustic washerwoman summoning her offspring to a task. “I've got a little matter for you to look after. S'pose you come around to dinner, and we can talk it over.”
“I'm engaged to dine with this gentleman,” said Davenport, coolly.
“Well, that's all right,” said the newcomer. “This gentleman can come, too.”
“We prefer to dine here,” said Davenport, with firmness. “We have our own reasons. I can meet you later.”
“No, you can't, because I've got other business later. But if you're determined to dine here, I can dine here just as well. So come on and dine.”
Davenport looked at the man wearily, and at Larcher apologetically; then introduced the former to the latter by the name of Bagley. Vouchsafing a brief condescending glance and a rough “How are you,” Mr. Bagley led the way into the eating-house, Davenport chagrinned on Larcher's account, and Larcher stricken dumb by the stranger's outrage upon his self-esteem.
Nothing that Mr. Bagley did or said later was calculated to improve the state of Larcher's feelings toward him. When the three had passed from the narrow entrance and through a small barroom to a long, low apartment adorned with old prints and playbills, Mr. Bagley took by conquest from another intending party a table close to a street window. He spread out his arms over as much of the table as they would cover, and evinced in various ways the impulse to grab and possess, which his very manner of walking had already shown. He even talked loud, as if to monopolize the company's hearing capacity.
As soon as dinner had been ordered,—a matter much complicated by Mr. Bagley's calling for things which the house didn't serve, and then wanting to know why it didn't,—he plunged at once into the details of some business with Davenport, to which the ignored Larcher, sulking behind an evening paper, studiously refrained from attending. By the time the chops and potatoes had been brought, the business had been communicated, and Bagley's mind was free to regard other things. He suddenly took notice of Larcher.
“So you're a friend of Dav's, are you?” quoth he, looking with benign patronage from one young man to the other.
“I've known Mr. Davenport a—short while,” said Larcher, with all the iciness of injured conceit.
“Same business?” queried Bagley.
“I beg your pardon,” said Larcher, as if the other had spoken a foreign language.
“Are you in the same business he's in?” said Bagley, in a louder voice.
“I—write,” said Larcher, coldly.
Bagley looked him over, and, with evident approval of his clothes, remarked: “You seem to've made a better thing of it than Dav has.”
“I make a living,” said Larcher, curtly, with a glance at Davenport, who showed no feeling whatever.
“Well, I guess that's about all Dav does,” said Bagley, in a jocular manner. “How is it, Dav, old man? But you never had any business sense.”
“I can't return the compliment,” said Davenport, quietly.
Bagley uttered a mirthful “Yah!” and looked very well contented with himself. “I've always managed to get along,” he admitted. “And a good thing for you I have, Dav. Where'ud you be to-day if you hadn't had me for your good angel whenever you struck hard luck?”
“I haven't the remotest idea,” said Davenport, as if vastly bored.
“Neither have I,” quoth Bagley, and filled his mouth with mutton and potato. When he had got these sufficiently disposed of to permit further speech, he added: “No, sir, you literary fellows think yourselves very fine people, but I don't see many of you getting to be millionaires by your work.”
“There are other ambitions in life,” said Larcher.
Mr. Bagley emitted a grunt of laughter. “Sour grapes! Sour grapes, young fellow! I know what I'm talking about. I've been a literary man myself.”
Larcher arrested his fork half-way between his plate and his mouth, in order to look his amazement. A curious twitch of the lips was the only manifestation of Davenport, except that he took a long sip of ale.
“Nobody would ever think it,” said Larcher.
“Yes, sir; I've been a literary man; a playwright, that is. Dramatic author, my friend Dav here would call it, I s'pose. But I made it pay.”
“I must confess I don't recognize the name of Bagley as being attached to any play I ever heard of,” said Larcher. “And yet I've paid a good deal of attention to the theatre.”
“That's because I never wrote but one play, and the money I made out of that—twenty thousand dollars it was—I put into the business of managing other people's plays. It didn't take me long to double it, did it, Dav? Mr. Davenport here knows all about it.”
“I ought to,” replied Davenport, coldly.
“Yes, that's right, you ought to. We were chums in those days, Mr.—I forget what your name is. We were both in hard luck then, me and Dav. But I knew what to do if I ever got hold of a bit of capital. So I wrote that play, and made a good arrangement with the actor that produced it, and got hold of twenty thousand. And that was the foundation of my fortune. Oh, yes, Dav remembers. We had hall rooms in the same house in East Fourteenth Street. We used to lend each other cuffs and collars. A man never forgets those days.”
With Davenport's talk of the afternoon fresh in mind, Larcher had promptly identified this big-talking vulgarian. Hot from several affronts, which were equally galling, whether ignorant or intended, he could conceive of nothing more sweet than to take the fellow down.
“I shouldn't wonder,” said he, “if Mr. Davenport had more particular reasons to remember that play.”
Davenport looked up from his plate, but merely with slight surprise, not with disapproval. Bagley himself stared hard at Larcher, then glanced at Davenport, and finally blurted out a laugh, and said:
“So Dav has been giving you his fairy tale? I thought he'd dropped it as a played-out chestnut. God knows how the delusion ever started in his head. That's a question for the psychologists—or the doctors, maybe. But he used to imagine—I give him credit for really imagining it—he used to imagine he had written that play. I s'pose that's what he's been telling you. But I thought he'd got over the hallucination; or got tired telling about it, anyhow.”
But, in the circumstances, no nice consideration of probabilities was necessary to make Larcher the warm partisan of Davenport. He answered, with as fine a derision as he could summon:
“Any unbiased judge, with you two gentlemen before him, if he had to decide which had written that play, wouldn't take long to agree with Mr. Davenport's hallucination, as you call it.”
Mr. Bagley gazed at Larcher for a few moments in silence, as if not knowing exactly what to make of him, or what manner to use toward him. He seemed at last to decide against a wrathful attitude, and replied:
“I suppose you're a very unbiased judge, and a very superior person all round. But nobody's asking for your opinion, and I guess it wouldn't count for much if they did. The public has long ago made up its mind about Mr. Davenport's little delusion.”
“As one of 'the public,' perhaps I have a right to dispute that,” retorted Larcher. “Men don't have such delusions.”
“Oh, don't they? That's as much as you know about the eccentricities of human nature,—and yet you presume to call yourself a writer. I guess you don't know the full circumstances of this case. Davenport himself admits that he was very ill at the time I disposed of the rights of that play. We were in each other's confidence then, and I had read the play to him, and talked it over with him, and he had taken a very keen interest in it, as any chum would. And then this illness came on, just when the marketing of the piece was on the cards. He was out of his head a good deal during his illness, and I s'pose that's how he got the notion he was the author. As it was, I gave him five hundred dollars as a present, to celebrate the acceptance of the piece. And I gave him that at once, too—half the amount of the money paid on acceptance, it was; for anything I knew then, it might have been half of all I should ever get for the play, because nobody could predict how it would pan out. Well, I've never borne him an ounce of malice for his delusion. Maybe at this very moment he still honestly thinks himself the author of that play; but I've always stood by him, and always will. Many's the piece of work I've put in his hands; and I will say he's never failed me on his side, either. Old Reliable Dav, that's what I call him; Old Reliable Dav, and I'd trust him with every dollar I've got in the world.” He finished with a clap of good fellowship on Davenport's shoulder, and then fell upon the remainder of his chop and potato with a concentration of interest that put an end to the dispute.
As for Davenport, he had continued eating in silence, with an expressionless face, as if the matter were one that concerned a stranger. Larcher, observing him, saw that he had indeed put that matter behind him, as one to which there was nothing but weariness to be gained in returning. The rest of the meal passed without event. Mr. Bagley made short work of his food, and left the two others with their coffee, departing in as self-satisfied a mood as he had arrived in, and without any trace of the little passage of words with Larcher.
A breath of relief escaped Davenport, and he said, with a faint smile:
“There was a time when I had my say about the play. We've had scenes, I can tell you. But Bagley is a man who can brazen out any assertion; he's a man impossible to outface. Even when he and I are alone together, he plays the same part; won't admit that I wrote the piece; and pretends to think I suffer under a delusion. I was ill at the time he disposed of my play; but I had written it long before the time of my illness.”
“How did he manage to pass it off as his?”
“We were friends then, as he says, or at least comrades. We met through being inmates of the same lodging-house. I rather took to him at first. I thought he was a breezy, cordial fellow; mistook his loudness for frankness, and found something droll and pleasing in his nasal drawl. That brass-horn voice!—ye gods, how I grew to shudder at it afterward! But I liked his company over a glass of beer; he was convivial, and told amusing stories of the people in the country town he came from, and of his struggles in trying to get a start in business. I was struggling as hard in my different way—a very different way, for he was an utter savage as far as art and letters were concerned. But we exchanged accounts of our daily efforts and disappointments, and knew all about each other's affairs,—at least he knew all about mine. And one of mine was the play which I wrote during the first months of our acquaintance. I read it to him, and he seemed impressed by it, or as much of it as he could understand. I had some idea of sending it to an actor who was then in need of a new piece, through the failure of one he had just produced. My play seemed rather suitable to him, and I told Bagley I thought of submitting it as soon as I could get it typewritten. But before I could do that, I was on my back with pneumonia, utterly helpless, and not thinking of anything in the world except how to draw my breath.
“The first thing I did begin to worry about, when I was on the way to recovery, was my debts, and particularly my debt to the landlady. She was a good woman, and wouldn't let me be moved to a hospital, but took care of me herself through all my illness. She furnished my food during that time, and paid for my medicines; and, furthermore, I owed her for several weeks' previous rent. So I bemoaned my indebtedness, and the hopelessness of ever getting out of it, a thousand times, day and night, till it became an old song in the ears of Bagley. One day he came in with his face full of news, and told me he had got some money from the sale of a farm, in which he had inherited a ninth interest. He said he intended to risk his portion in the theatrical business—he had had some experience as an advance agent—and offered to buy my play outright for five hundred dollars.
“Well, it was like an oar held out to a drowning man. I had never before had as much money at the same time. It was enough to pay all my debts, and keep me on my feet for awhile to come. Of course I knew that if my play were a fair success, the author's percentage would be many times five hundred dollars. But it might never be accepted,—no play of mine had been, and I had hawked two or three around among the managers,—and in that case I should get nothing at all. As for Bagley, his risk in producing a play by an unknown man was great. His chances of loss seemed to me about nine in ten. I took it that his offer was out of friendship. I grasped at the immediate certainty, and the play became the property of Bagley.
“I consoled myself with the reflection that, if the play made a real success, I should gain some prestige as an author, and find an easier hearing for future work. I was reading a newspaper one morning when the name of my play caught my eye. You can imagine how eagerly I started to read the item about it, and what my feelings were when I saw that it was immediately to be produced by the very actor to whom I had talked of sending it, and that the author was George A. Bagley. I thought there must be some mistake, and fell upon Bagley for an explanation as soon as he came home. He laughed, as men of his kind do when they think they have played some clever business trick; said he had decided to rent the play to the actor instead of taking it on the road himself; and declared that as it was his sole property, he could represent it as the work of anybody he chose. I raised a great stew about the matter; wrote to the newspapers, and rushed to see the actor. He may have thought I was a lunatic from my excitement; however, he showed me the manuscript Bagley had given him. It was typewritten, but the address of the typewriter copyist was on the cover. I hastened to the lady, and inquired about the manuscript from which she had made the copy. I showed her some of my penmanship, but she assured me the manuscript was in another hand. I ran home, and demanded the original manuscript from Bagley. 'Oh, certainly,' he said, and fished out a manuscript in his own writing. He had copied even my interlineations and erasures, to give his manuscript the look of an original draft. This was the copy from which the typewriter had worked. My own handwritten copy he had destroyed. I have sometimes thought that when the idea first occurred to him of submitting my play to the actor, he had meant to deal fairly with me, and to profit only by an agent's commission. But he may have inquired about the earnings of plays, and learned how much money a successful one brings; and the discovery may have tempted him to the fraud. Or his design may have been complete from the first. It is easy to understand his desire to become the sole owner of the play. Why he wanted to figure as the author is not so clear. It may have been mere vanity; it may have been—more probably was—a desire to keep to himself even the author's prestige, to serve him in future transactions of the same sort. In any case, he had created evidence of his authorship, and destroyed all existing proof of mine. He had made good terms,—a percentage on a sliding scale; one thousand dollars down on account. It was out of that thousand that he paid me the five hundred. The play was a great money-winner; Bagley's earnings from it were more than twenty thousand dollars in two seasons. That is the sum I should have had if I had submitted the play to the same actor, as I had intended to do. I made a stir in the newspapers for awhile; told my tale to managers and actors and reporters; started to take it to the courts, but had to give up for lack of funds; in short, got myself the name, as I told you today, of a man with a grievance. People smiled tolerantly at my story; it got to be one of the jokes of the Rialto. Bagley soon hit on the policy of claiming the authorship to my face, and pretending to treat my assertion charitably, as the result of a delusion conceived in illness. You heard him tonight. But it no longer disturbs me.”
“Has he ever written any plays of his own? Or had any more produced over his name?” asked Larcher.
“No. He put the greater part of his profits into theatrical management. He multiplied his investment. Then he 'branched out;' tried Wall Street and the race-tracks; went into real estate. He speculates now in many things. I don't know how rich he is. He isn't openly in theatrical management any more, but he still has large interests there; he is what they call an 'angel.'”
“He spoke of being your good angel.”
“He has been the reverse, perhaps. It's true, many a time when I've been at the last pinch, he has come to my rescue, employing me in some affair incidental to his manifold operations. Unless you have been hungry, and without a market for your work; unless you have walked the streets penniless, and been generally 'despised and rejected of men,' you, perhaps, can't understand how I could accept anything at his hands. But I could, and sometimes eagerly. As soon as possible after our break, he assumed the benevolent attitude toward me. I resisted it with proper scorn for a time. But hard lines came; 'my poverty but not my will' consented. In course of time, there ceased to be anything strange in the situation. I got used to his service, and his pay, yet without ever compounding for the trick he played me. He trusts me thoroughly—he knows men. This association with him, though it has saved me from desperate straits, is loathsome to me, of course. It has contributed as much as anything to my self-hate. If I had resolutely declined it, I might have found other resources at the last extremity. My life might have taken a different course. That is why I say he has been, perhaps, the reverse of a good angel to me.”
“But you must have written other plays,” pursued Larcher.
I should have been a different man if I had received the honor and the profits of that first accepted play of mine.”
“I should think that, as Bagley is so rich, he would quietly hand you over twenty thousand dollars, at least, for the sake of his conscience.”
“Men of Bagley's sort have no conscience where money is concerned. I used to wonder just what share of his fortune was rightly mine, if one knew how to estimate. It was my twenty thousand dollars he invested; what percentage of the gains would belong to me, giving him his full due for labor and skill? And then the credit of the authorship,—which he flatly robbed me of,—what would be its value? But that is all matter for mere speculation. As to the twenty thousand alone, there can be no doubt.”
“And yet he said tonight he would trust you with every dollar he had in the world.”
“Yes, he would.” Davenport smiled. “He knows that I know the difference between a moral right and a legal right. He knows the difficulties in the way of any attempt at self-restitution on my part,—and the unpleasant consequences. Oh, yes, he would trust me with large sums; has done so, in fact. I have handled plenty of his cash. He is what they call a 'ready-money man;' does a good deal of business with bank-notes of high denomination,—it enables him to seize opportunities and make swift transactions. He should interest you, if you have an eye for character.”
Upon which remark, Davenport raised his cup, as if to finish the coffee and the subject at the same time. Larcher sat silently wondering what other dramas were comprised in the history of his singular companion, besides that wherein Bagley was concerned, and that in which the fickle woman had borne a part. He found himself interested, on his own account, in this haggard-eyed, world-wearied, yet not unattractive man, as well as for Miss Hill. When Davenport spoke again, it was in regard to the artistic business which now formed a tie between himself and Larcher.
This business was in due time performed. It entailed as much association with Davenport as Larcher could wish for his purpose. He learnt little more of the man than he had learned on the first day of their acquaintance, but that in itself was considerable. Of it he wrote a full report to Miss Hill; and in the next few weeks he added some trifling discoveries. In October that young woman and her aunt returned to town, and to possession of a flat immediately south of Central Park. Often as Larcher called there, he could not draw from Edna the cause of her interest in Davenport. But his own interest sufficed to keep him the regular associate of that gentleman; he planned further magazine work for himself to write and Davenport to illustrate, and their collaboration took them together to various parts of the city.
The lower part of Fifth Avenue, the part between Madison and Washington Squares, the part which alone was “the Fifth Avenue” whereof Thackeray wrote in the far-off days when it was the abode of fashion,—the far-off days when fashion itself had not become old-fashioned and got improved into Smart Society,—this haunted half-mile or more still retains many fine old residences of brown stone and of red brick, which are spruce and well-kept. One such, on the west side of the street, of red brick, with a high stoop of brown stone, is a boarding-house, and in it is an apartment to which, on a certain clear, cold afternoon in October, the reader's presence in the spirit is respectfully invited.
The hallway of the house is prolonged far beyond the ordinary limits of hallways, in order to lead to a secluded parlor at the rear, apparently used by its occupants as a private sitting and dining room. At the left side of this room, after one enters, are folding doors opening from what is evidently somebody's bed-chamber. At the same side, further on, is a large window, the only window in the room. As the ceiling is so high, and the wall-paper so dark, the place is rather dim of light at all times, even on this sunny autumn afternoon when the world outside is so full of wintry brightness.
The view of the world outside afforded by the window—which looks southward—is of part of a Gothic church in profile, and the backs of houses, all framing an expanse of gardens. It is a peaceful view, and this back parlor itself, being such a very back parlor, receives the city's noises dulled and softened. One seems very far, here, from the clatter and bang, the rush and strenuousness, really so near at hand. The dimness is restful; it is relieved, near the window, by a splash of sunlight; and, at the rear of the room, by a coal fire in the grate. The furniture is old and heavy, consisting largely of chairs of black wood in red velvet. Half lying back in one of these is a fretful-looking, fine-featured man of late middle age, with flowing gray hair and flowing gray mustache. His eyes are closed, but perhaps he is not asleep. There is a piano near a corner, opposite the window, and out of the splash of sunshine, but its rosewood surface reflects here and there the firelight. And at the piano, playing a soft accompaniment, sits a tall, slender young woman, with a beautiful but troubled face, who sings in a low voice one of Tosti's love-songs.
Her figure is still girlish, but her face is womanly; a classic face, not like the man's in expression, but faintly resembling it in form, though her features, clearly outlined, have not the smallness of his. Her eyes are large and deep blue. There is enough rich color of lip, and fainter color of cheek, to relieve the whiteness of her complexion. The trouble on her face is of some permanence; it is not petty like that of the man's, but is at one with the nobility of her countenance. It seems to find rest in the tender sadness of the song, which, having finished, she softly begins again:
“'I think of what thou art to me, I think of what thou canst not be'”—
As the man gives signs of animation, such as yawning, and moving in his chair, the girl breaks off gently and looks to see if he is annoyed by the song. He opens his eyes, and says, in a slow, complaining voice:
“Yes, you can sing, there's no doubt of that. And such expression!—unconscious expression, too. What a pity—what a shame—that your gift should be utterly wasted!”
“It isn't wasted if my singing pleases you, father,” says the girl, patiently.
“I don't want to keep the pleasure all to myself,” replies the man, peevishly. “I'm not selfish enough for that. We have no right to hide our light under a bushel. The world has a claim on our talents. And the world pays for them, too. Think of the money—think of how we might live! Ah, Florence, what a disappointment you've been to me!”
She listens as one who has many times heard the same plaint; and answers as one who has as often made the same answer:
“I have tried, but my voice is not strong enough for the concert stage, and the choirs are all full.”
“You know well enough where your chance is. With your looks, in comic opera—”
The girl frowns, and speaks for the first time with some impatience: “And you know well enough my determination about that. The one week's experience I had—”
“Oh, nonsense!” interrupted the man. “All managers are not like that fellow. There are plenty of good, gentle young women on the comic opera stage.”
“No doubt there are. But the atmosphere was not to my taste. If I absolutely had to endure it, of course I could. But we are not put to that necessity.”
“Necessity! Good Heaven, don't we live poorly enough?”
“We live comfortably enough. As long as Dick insists on making us our present allowance—”
“Insists? I should think he would insist! As if my own son, whom I brought up and started in life, shouldn't provide for his old father to the full extent of his ability!”
“All the same, it's a far greater allowance than most sons or brothers make.”
“Because other sons are ungrateful, and blind to their duty, it doesn't follow that Dick ought to be. Thank Heaven, I brought him up better than that. I'm only sorry that his sister can't see things in the same light as he does. After all the trouble of raising my children, and the hopes I've built on them—”
“But you know perfectly well,” she protests, softly, “that Dick makes us such a liberal allowance in order that I needn't go out and earn money. He has often said that. Even when you praise him for his dutifulness to you, he says it's not that, but his love for me. And because it is the free gift of his love, I'm willing to accept it.”
“I suppose so, I suppose so,” says the man, in a tone of resignation to injury. “It's very little that I'm considered, after all. You were always a pair, always insensible of the pains I've taken over you. You always seemed to regard it as a matter of course that I should feed you, and clothe you, and educate you.”
The girl sighs, and begins faintly to touch the keys of the piano again. The man sighs, too, and continues, with a heightened note of personal grievance:
“If any man's hopes ever came to shipwreck, mine have. Just look back over my life. Look at the professional career I gave up when I married your mother, in order to be with her more than I otherwise could have been. Look how poorly we lived, she and I, on the little income she brought me. And then the burden of you children! And what some men would have felt a burden, as you grew up, I made a source of hopes. I had endowed you both with good looks and talent; Dick with business ability, and you with a gift for music. In order to cultivate these advantages, which you had inherited from me, I refrained from going into any business when your mother died. I was satisfied to share the small allowance her father made you two children. I never complained. I said to myself, 'I will invest my time in bringing up my children.' I thought it would turn out the most profitable investment in the world,—I gave you children that much credit then. How I looked forward to the time when I should begin to realize on the investment!”
“I'm sure you can't say Dick hasn't repaid you,” says the girl. “He began to earn money as soon as he was nineteen, and he has never—”
“Time enough, too,” the man breaks in. “It was a very fortunate thing I had fitted him for it by then. Where would he have been, and you, when your grandfather died in debt, and the allowance stopped short, if I hadn't prepared Dick to step in and make his living?”
“Our living,” says the girl.
“Our living, of course. It would be very strange if I weren't to reap a bare living, at least, from my labor and care. Who should get a living out of Dick's work if not his father, who equipped him with the qualities for success?” The gentleman speaks as if, in passing on those valuable qualities to his son by heredity, he had deprived himself. “Dick hasn't done any more than he ought to; he never could. And yet what he has done, is so much more than nothing at all, that—” He stops as if it were useless to finish, and looks at his daughter, who, despite the fact that this conversation is an almost daily repetition, colors with displeasure.
After a moment, she gathers some spirit, and says: “Well, if I haven't earned any money for you, I've at least made some sacrifices to please you.”
“You mean about the young fellow that hung on to us so close on our trip to Europe?”
“The young man who did us so many kindnesses, and was of so much use to you, on our trip to Europe,” she corrects.
“He thought I was rich, my dear, and that you were an heiress. He was a nobody, an adventurer, probably. If things had gone any further between you and him, your future might have been ruined. It was only another example of my solicitude for you; another instance that deserves your thanks, but elicits your ingratitude. If you are fastidious about a musical career, at least you have still a possibility of a good marriage. It was my duty to prevent that possibility from being cut off.”
She turns upon him a look of high reproach.
“And that was the only motive, then,” she cries, “for your tears and your illness, and the scenes that wrung from me the promise to break with him?”
“It was motive enough, wasn't it?” he replies, defensively, a little frightened at her sudden manner of revolt. “My thoughtfulness for your future—my duty as a father—my love for my child—”
“You pretended it was your jealous love for me, your feeling of desertion, your loneliness. I might have known better! You played on my pity, on my love for you, on my sense of duty as a daughter left to fill my mother's place. When you cried over being abandoned, when you looked so forlorn, my heart melted. And that night when you said you were dying, when you kept calling for me—'Flo, where is little Flo'—although I was there leaning over you, I couldn't endure to grieve you, and I gave my promise. And it was only that mercenary motive, after all!—to save me for a profitable marriage!” She gazes at her father with an expression so new to him on her face, that he moves about in his chair, and coughs before answering:
“You will appreciate my action some day. And besides, your promise to drop the man wasn't so much to give. You admitted, yourself, he hadn't written to you. He had afforded you good cause, by his neglect.”
“He was very busy at that time. I always thought there was something strange about his sudden failure to write—something that could have been explained, if my promise to you hadn't kept me from inquiring.”
The father coughs again, at this, and turns his gaze upon the fire, which he contemplates deeply, to the exclusion of all other objects. The girl, after regarding him for a moment, sighs profoundly; placing her elbows on the keyboard, she leans forward and buries her face in her hands.
This picture, not disturbed by further speech, abides for several ticks of the French clock on the mantelpiece. Suddenly it is broken by a knock at the door. Florence sits upright, and dries her eyes. A negro man servant with a discreet manner enters and announces two visitors. “Show them in at once,” says Florence, quickly, as if to forestall any possible objection from her father. The negro withdraws, and presently, with a rapid swish of skirts, in marches a very spick and span young lady, her diminutive but exceedingly trim figure dressed like an animated fashion-plate. She is Miss Edna Hill, and she comes brisk and dashing, with cheeks afire from the cold, bringing into the dull, dreamy room the life and freshness of the wintry day without. Behind her appears a stranger, whose name Florence scarcely heeded when it was announced, and who enters with the solemn, hesitant air of one hitherto unknown to the people of the house. He is a young man clothed to be the fit companion of Miss Hill, and he waits self-effacingly while that young lady vivaciously greets Florence as her dearest, and while she bestows a touch of her gloved fingers and a “How d'ye do, Mr. Kenby,” on the father. She then introduces the young man as Mr. Larcher, on whose face, as he bows, there appears a surprised admiration of Florence Kenby's beauty.
Miss Hill monopolizes Florence, however, and Larcher is left to wander to the fire, and take a pose there, and discuss the weather with Mr. Kenby, who does not seem to find the subject, or Larcher himself, at all interesting, a fact which the young man is not slow in divining. Strained relations immediately ensue between the two gentlemen.
As soon as the young ladies are over the preliminary burst of compliments and news, Edna says:
“I'm lucky to find you at home, but really you oughtn't to be moping in a dark place like this, such a fine afternoon.”
“Father can't go out because of his rheumatism, and I stay to keep him company,” replies Florence.
“Oh, dear me, Mr. Kenby,” says Edna, looking at the gentleman rather skeptically, as if she knew him of old and suspected a habit of exaggerating his ailments, “can't you pass the time reading or something? Florence must go out every day; she'll ruin her looks if she doesn't,—her health, too. I should think you could manage to entertain yourself alone an hour or two.”
“It isn't that,” explains Florence; “he often wants little things done, and it's painful for him to move about. In a house like this, the servants aren't always available, except for routine duties.”
“Well, I'll tell you what,” proposes Edna, blithely; “you get on your things, dear, and we'll run around and have tea with Aunt Clara at Purcell's. Mr. Larcher and I were to meet her there, but you come with me, and Mr. Larcher will stay and look after your father. He'll be very glad to, I know.”
Mr. Larcher is too much taken by surprise to be able to say how very glad he will be. Mr. Kenby, with Miss Hill's sharp glance upon him, seems to feel that he would cut a poor figure by opposing. So Florence is rushed by her friend's impetuosity into coat and hat, and carried off, Miss Hill promising to return with her for Mr. Larcher “in an hour or two.” Before Mr. Larcher has had time to collect his scattered faculties, he is alone with the pettish-looking old man to whom he has felt himself an object of perfect indifference. He glares, with a defiant sense of his own worth, at the old man, until the old man takes notice of his existence.
“Oh, it's kind of you to stay, Mr.—ahem. But they really needn't have troubled you. I can get along well enough myself, when it's absolutely necessary. Of course, my daughter will be easier in mind to have some one here.”
“I am very glad to be of service—to so charming a young woman,” says Larcher, very distinctly.
“A charming girl, yes. I'm very proud of my daughter. She's my constant thought. Children are a great care, a great responsibility.”
“Yes, they are,” asserts Larcher, jumping at the chance to show this uninterested old person that wise young men may sometimes be entertained unawares. “It's a sign of progress that parents are learning on which side the responsibility lies. It used to be universally accepted that the obligation was on the part of the children. Now every writer on the subject starts on the basis that the obligation is on the side of the parent. It's hard to see how the world could have been so idiotic formerly. As if the child, summoned here in ignorance by the parents for their own happiness, owed them anything!”
Mr. Kenby stares at the young man for a time, and then says, icily:
“I don't quite follow you.”
“Why, it's very clear,” says Larcher, interested now for his argument. “You spoke of your sense of responsibility toward your child.”
(“The deuce I did!” thinks Mr. Kenby.)
“Well, that sense is most natural in you, and shows an enlightened mind. For how can parents feel other than deeply responsible toward the being they have called into existence? How can they help seeing their obligation to make existence for that being as good and happy as it's in their power to make it? Who dare say that there is a limit to their obligation toward that being?”
“And how about that being's obligations in return?” Mr. Kenby demands, rather loftily.
“That being's obligations go forward to the beings it in turn summons to life. The child, becoming in time a parent, assumes a parent's debt. The obligation passes on from generation to generation, moving always to the future, never back to the past.”
“Somewhat original theories!” sniffs the old man. “I suppose, then, a parent in his old age has no right to look for support to his children?”
“It is the duty of people, before they presume to become parents, to provide against the likelihood of ever being a burden to their children. In accepting from their children, they rob their children's children. But the world isn't sufficiently advanced yet to make people so far-seeing and provident, and many parents do have to look to their children for support. In such cases, the child ought to provide for the parent, but out of love or humanity, not because of any purely logical claim. You see the difference, of course.”
Mr. Kenby gives a shrug, and grunts ironically.
“The old-fashioned idea still persists among the multitude,” Larcher goes on, “and many parents abuse it in practice. There are people who look upon their children mainly as instruments sent from Heaven for them to live by. From the time their children begin to show signs of intelligence, they lay plans and build hopes of future gain upon them. It makes my blood boil, sometimes, to see mothers trying to get their pretty daughters on the stage, or at a typewriter, in order to live at ease themselves. And fathers, too, by George! Well, I don't think there's a more despicable type of humanity in this world than the able-bodied father who brings his children up with the idea of making use of them!”
Mr. Larcher has worked himself into a genuine and very hearty indignation. Before he can entirely calm down, he is put to some wonder by seeing his auditor rise, in spite of rheumatism, and walk to the door at the side of the room. “I think I'll lie down awhile,” says Mr. Kenby, curtly, and disappears, closing the door behind him. Mr. Larcher, after standing like a statue for some time by the fire, ensconces himself in a great armchair before it, and gazes into it until, gradually stolen upon by a sense of restful comfort in the darkening room, he falls asleep.
He is awakened by the gay laugh of Edna Hill, as she and Florence enter the room. He is on his feet in time to keep his slumbers a secret, and explains that Mr. Kenby has gone for a nap. When the gas is lit, he sees that Florence, too, is bright-faced from the outer air, that her eye has a fresher sparkle, and that she is more beautiful than before. As it is getting late, and Edna's Aunt Clara is to be picked up in a shop in Twenty-third Street where the girls have left her, Larcher is borne off before he can sufficiently contemplate Miss Kenby's beauty. Florence is no sooner alone than Mr. Kenby comes out of the little chamber.
“I hope you feel better for your nap, father.”
“I didn't sleep any, thank you,” says Mr. Kenby. “What an odious young man that was! He has the most horrible principles. I think he must be an anarchist, or something of that sort. Did you enjoy your tea?”
The odious young man, walking briskly up the lighted avenue, past piano shops and publishing houses, praises Miss Kenby's beauty to Edna Hill, who echoes the praise without jealousy.
“She's perfectly lovely,” Edna asserts, “and then, think of it, she has had a romance, too; but I mustn't tell that.”
“It's strange you never mentioned her to me before, being such good friends with her.”
“Oh, they've only just got settled back in town,” answers Edna, evasively. “What do you think of the old gentleman?”
“He seems a rather queer sort. Do you know him very well?”
“Well enough. He's one of those people whose dream in life is to make money out of their children.”
“What! Then I did put my foot in it!” Larcher tells of the brief conversation he had with Mr. Kenby. It makes Edna laugh heartily.
“Good for him!” she cries. “It's a shame, his treatment of Florence. Her brother out West supports them, and is very glad to do so on her account. Yet the covetous old man thinks she ought to be earning money, too. She's quite too fond of him—she even gave up a nice young man she was in love with, for her father's sake. But listen. I don't want you to mention these people's names to anybody—not to anybody, mind! Promise.”
“Very well. But why?”
“I won't tell you,” she says, decidedly; and, when he looks at her in mute protest, she laughs merrily at his helplessness. So they go on up the avenue.