On the Stairs Part 13

And about his wife? Well, the slate appeared to have been wiped--if there really had been any definite marks upon it. a.s.suredly no smears were left to show. Those of the younger generation of seven or eight years before had used the time and arranged their futures, and the still younger were pressing into their places--witness Johnny's own brood. Gertrude McComas was now a self-a.s.sured though careful matron--careful, I thought, not to ask too much of general society; careful not to notice whether or no she received too little; careful, most of all, not to let it appear that she _was_ careful. Perhaps it was this care which made up a part of her general strain--and enabled her to keep the lithe slenderness of her early figure.

We came back to town--the three of us--by train. Both of my Elsies were thoughtful. Certainly we were playing a less brilliant part than the family we had just left.

III

Meanwhile Albert pursued his studies. Though he had not so far to come for a short vacation as the McComas young men, he spent the short vacations at the school. He was at an awkward age, and Raymond, who could see him with eyes not unduly clouded by affection, felt him to be an unpromising cub. He was no adornment for any house, and no satisfying companion for his father. So he pa.s.sed the Easter week among his teachers.

McComas too saw little of Albert. Those months with his mother were usually worked off at some distant resort, which his stepfather was often too busy to reach. Only once did he spend any of the allotted time in McComas's house. This was a fortnight in that grandiose yet tawdry fabric which had been sacrificed to business, and the occasion was an illness in the family (not Albert's) which delayed the summer's outing.

McComas had accepted Albert with a large tolerance--at least he was not annoyed. In fact, the boy's mother, however she may have hara.s.sed Raymond, never (to do her justice) pushed Albert on her second husband.

So, when the juncture arrived,--

"Why, yes," Johnny had said, "have him here, of course; and let him stay as long as you like. He doesn't bother _me_."

Well, Albert went ahead, doing his Latin, and groping farther into the dusky penumbra of mathematics. "Why?" he asked; and they explained that it was the necessary preparation for the university. Albert pondered. He began to fear that he must continue learning things he didn't want or need, so that he might go ahead toward learning other things he didn't want or need. He took a plaintive, discouraged tone in a letter to his mother; and she--making an exception to her rule--pa.s.sed along the protest to McComas. She felt, I suppose, that he would give an answering note.

Johnny laughed. He himself cared nothing for study; and he was so happily const.i.tuted, as well as so constantly occupied, that he never had to take refuge in a book.

"Oh, well," he said, broadly, "he'll live through it all, and live it down. I expect Tom and Joe to. The final gains will be in quite another direction."

Raymond had heard the same plaint from Albert, and was less pleased. The boy was clearly to be no student, still less a lover of the arts.

Raymond pa.s.sed over all thought of old Jehiel, the ruthlessly acquisitive, and placed the blame on the other grandfather, who was now in an early dotage after a lifelong harnessing to the stock-ticker.

"_I_ don't know how he's coming out!" was Raymond's impatient remark, over one of Albert's letters. "Who knows what _any_ boy is going to be?"

Albert accepted his school readily enough as a place of residence. He did not now need, so much as before, his mother's small cares--in fact, was glad to be relieved from them; nor was he quite advanced enough to profit from a cautious father's hints and suggestions. I found myself hoping that Raymond, at the coming stage of Albert's development, might have as little trouble as I had had over my own boy (with whose early career I shall not burden you). Yet, after all, fathers may apprehensively exchange views and cautiously devise methods of approach only to find their efforts superfluous: so many boys come through perfectly well, after all. Simply consider, for example, those in our old singing-cla.s.s. The only one to occasion any inconvenience was Johnny McComas, and he was not a member at all.

The one side of the matter that began to concern Raymond was the money side. Albert cost at school, and was going to cost more at college. His father began to economize. For instance, he cut off, this spring, the contribution which he had been making for years in support of an organization of reformers that had been working for civic betterment.

These men, considering their small number and their limited resources had done wonders in raising the tone and quality of the local administration. The city's reputation, outside, had become respectable.

But a sag had begun to show itself--the relapse that is pretty certain to follow on an extreme and perhaps overstrained endeavor. The little band needed money. Raymond was urged to reconsider and to continue--the upgrade would soon be reached again. Raymond sent, reluctantly, a smaller amount and asked why the net for contributions was not cast a little wider. He even suggested a few names.

Whether he mentioned the name of John W. McComas I do not know, but McComas was given an opportunity to help.

"See what they've sent me," he said to me one day on the street.

He smiled over the urgent, fervid phrases of the appeal. The world, so far as he was concerned, was going very well. It didn't need improvement; and if it did, he hadn't the time to improve it.

"They appear to be losing their grip," he added. "They didn't do very well last election, anyhow."

I sensed his reluctance to be a.s.sociated with a cause that seemed to be a losing one.

"Well, I don't know," I said. "I'm giving something myself; and if I can afford to, you can."

But he developed no interest. He sent a check absurdly disproportionate to his capacity (he was embarra.s.sed, I am glad to say, when he mentioned later the amount); and I incline to think that even this bit was done almost out of a personal regard for me.

Raymond cut a part of his own contribution out of Albert's allowance, and there was better reason than ever why Albert should not take a long trip for only four or five days at home.

IV

It is tiresome, I know, to read about munic.i.p.al reform; most of us want the results and not the process--and some of us not even the results.

And it is no less tiresome to read about investments, unless we are dealing with some young knight of finance who strives successfully for his lady's favor and who, successful, lives with her ever after in the style to which her father has accustomed her. But in the case of a maladroit man of fifty....

I had asked Raymond to call on me with any new scheme that was taking his attention, and one forenoon he walked in.

He had an envelope of loose papers. He laid some of them on my desk and thumbed a few others with an undecided expression.

"What do you think of this?" he asked. "I've got to have more money, and here's something that may bring it in."

It was a speculative industrial affair in Upper Michigan. I saw some familiar names attached--among them that of John W. McComas, though not prominently.

"I'll find out for you," I said.

"I don't want you to find out from him."

"I'll find out."

Raymond fingered his envelope fussily: there was nothing left in it.

"It's all costing me too much. Extras at that school. That big house--too big, too expensive. I can't lug it along any farther. Find me some one to buy it."

"I'll see," I said.

I told him about our visit to the club, two or three months before. I implied, in as delicate and circ.u.mambulatory a way as possible, that his one-time wife, according to my own observations, taken under peculiarly favorable, because exacting, conditions, was completely accepted.

"Oh yes," he replied, as if the matter had been settled years ago, and as if he had long had that sense of it. Yes, he seemed to be saying, the marriage had made it all right for her, and had soon begun to make it better for him. Possibly not a "deceived" husband; and no longer so rawly flagrant a failure as a human companion.

"Their house is good, I gather," he went on. "There were some plates of it in the architectural journals. Just how good he doesn't know, I suppose--and never will."

"I found him fairly appreciative of it."

"Possibly--as a financial achievement brought about by his own money."

"He's learning some of its good points," I declared.

"There was some talk of having Albert there, just before they went off to the Yellowstone." He frowned. "Well, this can't go on so many more years, now."

I did not quite get Raymond's att.i.tude. He did not want the boy with him at home. He did not want to meet any extra expenses--and Mrs. McComas was a.s.suredly paying Albert's way through mid-summer, as well as eternally buying him clothes. I think that what Raymond wanted--and wanted but rather weakly--was his own will, whether there was any advantage in it or not, and wanted that will without payments, charges, costs.

I disliked his grudging way, or rather, his balking way, as regarded a recognition of the liberality of his former wife's husband--for that was what it came to.

I returned his prospectus. "I'll look this up. How about that company in Montana?" I continued.

"They've pa.s.sed a dividend. I was counting on something from that quarter."

"And how about the factory in Iowa?"

"That will bring me something next year."