On the Stairs Part 3

This comment on Raymond's musical inclinations and musical services may require a bit of shading: I believe that, after all, he never quite cared for music unless he had, in all literalness, his "hand" in it. He never liked to hear any one else play the piano, still less the violin; concerts of all sorts were likely to bore him; and he never really rose to an understanding of the more recondite and elaborate musical forms: to have his fingers on the keyboard--especially when improvising in a secure inarticulateness--was his great desideratum.

In our little group we ran from seventeen to nineteen; some of us just finishing high school, others just on the edge of college, others (like myself) engaged in professional studies, and still others making a debut in business as clerks. We sang mostly the innocent old songs, American or English, of an earlier day, and sometimes the decorous numbers from the self-respecting operetta recently established in London. No contributions from a new and dubious foreign element had yet come to cheapen our taste, to disturb our nervous systems, or to throw upon the negro, the Hawaiian, or the Argentine the onus of a cra.s.s pa.s.sion that one was more desirous of expressing than of acknowledging. No; there was a.s.suredly no excess of emotional life--whether good or bad--in the body of music we favored. Perhaps what our little circle really desired was simply good-fellowship and a high degree of harmonious clamor. Certainly all our doings, whether on Friday evening, or on the other forenoons, afternoons, and evenings of the week, were quite devoid of an embarra.s.sing s.e.x-consciousness. We "trained together," as the expression went--all the fellows and all the Gertrudes and Adeles--with no sense of _malaise_, and postponing, or setting aside, in the miraculous American fashion, all s.e.xual considerations whatsoever.

I hardly know just why I should have thought that Johnny McComas could be introduced successfully into this circle. Johnny, as he had told us in his suburb, had cut loose from his parents. He was now living on his own, in a neighborhood not far from ours--from his, as it had once been.

One evening I ventured to bring him round. He developed an obstreperous baritone--it was the same voice, now more specifically in action, that I had first heard on the devastated prairie; and he made himself rather preponderant, whether he happened to know the song or not.

"Why, you're quite an addition!" commented one of the girls, in surprise--almost in consternation.

"He is, indeed,--if he doesn't drown us all out!" muttered one of the fellows, behind his back.

Yes, Johnny was vociferous--so long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles--a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make their "start," overlooking the fact that Raymond was in the bank, and ignorant of the further fact that one of our fellows was just beginning to be a salesman in a bond house. Johnny became violently communicative about the attractions of Dellwood Park and seemed to want to figure demonstratively in the eyes of Gertrude and Adele as an up-and-coming paladin of the business world. To most of us he seemed too self-a.s.sertive, too self-a.s.sured. He knew too clearly what he wanted, and showed it too clearly. Indeed it became apparent to me that while a boy of twelve may be accepted easily (at least in an early, simple society), a youth of eighteen cannot altogether escape the issues of caste. It was borne in on me presently that Johnny might as well have remained away. In fact--

"We shan't need him again," said the brother of the soprano to me, as the evening broke up.

And Raymond himself remarked to me a day later:--

"Don't push him; he'll get along without your help."

IV

While the rankness of new elements in a new era had not penetrated our homes, it had begun to make itself manifest in public places. The town, within sixty years, had risen from a population of nearly _nil_ to a population of some five or six hundred thousand; and it was only in due course, perhaps, that "vice" now raised its head and that a "criminal cla.s.s" came into effective, unabashed functioning. It was to be many years before the better elements learned how to combine for an efficient opposition to impudent evils. A heterogeneous populace, newly arrived, was still willing to elect mayors of native blood; but one of these, elected and reelected to the town's lasting harm, might as well have been of the newer, and wholly exterior, tradition: a genial, loose-lipped demagogue who saw an opportunity to weld the miscellany of discrepant elements into a compact engine for the furtherance of his own coa.r.s.e ambitions, and who allowed his supporters such a measure of license as was needed to make their support continuing. A shameless new quarter suddenly obtruded itself with an ugly emphasis; uncla.s.sifiables, male and female, began to a.s.sert and disport themselves more daringly than dreamt of heretofore; and many good citizens who would crowd the town forward to a population of a million and to a status undeniably metropolitan came to stroll these tawdry, noisy new streets with a curiosity of mind at once disturbed, t.i.tillated, and somehow gratified.

Said some: "This is a new thing; do we quite like it?" Said others: "The town is certainly moving ahead; we don't know but that we do."

Yes, a good many social observers set forth to see for themselves the new phenomena and to appraise the value of them in the coming political and social life of the community. Of course, many of these observers were too young and heedless to draw inferences from the sudden flood of new bars and bright lights and cra.s.s tunes and youthful creatures in short skirts who seemed not quite to know whether their proper element was the stage above or the range of tables below; in fact, these observers waived all attempt at speculative thought and became partic.i.p.ants.

Raymond and I had heard comments on the new developments from our elders; we were not without our own curiosity (though we had enough fastidiousness not to graze things very close, still less to wade into them very deep), and we decided one evening that we would look into two or three of these new and notable places of public entertainment.

The first of them offered little. The second of them developed Johnny McComas. He sat at a table, talking too familiarly, or at least too forbearingly, with a rubicund, hard-faced man in shirt-sleeves standing at his elbow--probably the head of the place, or his first aide; and he was buying obviously unnecessary gla.s.ses of things for two of the young creatures in short skirts--Gertrudes and Adeles of that particular stratum, or Katies and Maggies, if preferred. Johnny sat there happy enough: an early example of the young business warrior diverting himself after the fray. Years afterward the scene came back to me when I met with a showy painting in the resonant new lobby of one of the greater hotels. It showed a terrace overlooking some placid Greek sea; the happy warrior standing ungirt and uncasqued, with a beautiful maiden of indeterminate status seated beside him; a graceful attendant holding a wreath above each happy and prosperous head, and a group of sandaled dancing-girls lightly footing it for the pleasure of the fortunate pair; the whole scene illuminated by the supreme, smiling self-satisfaction of the relaxed soldier amid the pipings of peace. So Johnny; he had earned the money and won the right to spend it in pleasure; his, too, the duty of refreshing himself for the strenuous morrow.

He saw us and nodded. "Life!"--that was what he seemed to say. He made a feint to interest us in his companions; but they were poor things, as we knew, and as he must have known too. He left them without much regret and without much ceremony, and took us on to the next place.

"It's life, isn't it?" he said in so many words.

Raymond's nose went up disdainfully. "Life!" Some such manifestations, if properly handled and framed, might be life in Paris, perhaps; but he could not accept them as life here at home, within a mile or two of his own study. What this evening offered him seemed to require a considerable touch of refining before it could reach acceptance. It was all only an imperfectly specious subst.i.tute for life, only a coa.r.s.e parody on life. The town, he told me the next day, made him think of a pumpkin: it was big and sudden and coa.r.s.e-textured. "I've had enough of it," he added; "I want something different, and something a lot better."

Johnny, as I say, took us to the next place; we might not have known how to take ourselves there. Johnny honestly liked the glare, the noise, the uproarious music, and the human press both on the sidewalks and in the packed, panting interiors. I liked it all, too,--for once in a way; but I soon saw that, for Raymond, even once in a way was once too often. In this last place a girl with a hand too familiarly laid on his arm gave the finishing touch; it was a coa.r.s.e, dingy little hand, with some tawdry rings. Raymond never liked close quarters; neither in those days, nor ever after, did he care to come decisively to grips with actual life. "Keep off!" was what his look said to the offender. The poor, puzzled little debutante quickly stepped back, and we all regained the street. Raymond was trembling with embarra.s.sment and vexation.

"Why, you were making a hit," said Johnny.

"Let's get home," said Raymond to me, ignoring Johnny. "This is enough, and more than enough. What a hole this town is coming to be!"

V

Raymond stayed on at the bank, though--if one might judge by his words and actions--with no enthusiasm in the present and no hopefulness for the future. He did what he had to do, and did it fairly well; but there was no sign that he was looking forward, and there remained scant likelihood that he would meet the expectations of his father and grandfather by mastering the business. On the contrary, I think he actually set his face against it: he seemed as resolute not to learn banking as he had been resolute not to learn dancing. Professor Baltique and the little girls in light-soled shoes and bright-colored sashes had given him up in the waltz; and it looked as if James B. Prince must presently renounce all hope of his ever learning how to turn the collective spare cash of many depositors to profit. I recall the day when the chief little light of the dancing-cla.s.s, after some moments of completely static tramplings by Raymond in the midst of the floor, suddenly began to pout and to frown, and then left him in the midst of the dance and of the company and came to tears before she could reach an elder sister by the side wall. Raymond accepted the incident without comment. If his demeanor expressed anything, it expressed his satisfaction at carrying a point.

But he did not wait until a vexed and disappointed bank left him high and dry. Though he must have known that many young clerks in the office envied him his billet and that many young fellows outside it would have been glad to get in on any terms whatever, he never gave a sign that he valued his opportunity; and when he finally pulled out it was with no regard to any possible successor.

The younger men in the bank were a rather trim lot, and were expected to be. They did wonders, in the way of dressing, on their sixty or seventy-five dollars a month. Raymond's own dressing, for some little time past, had grown somewhat slack and careless. I did him the injustice of supposing that he felt himself to be himself, and _hors concours_ so far as the general body of clerklings was concerned; but he had other reasons.

He had given up buying books and periodicals; no new volumes to be seen in his room except works of travel (preferably guide-books) and grammars and dictionaries of foreign languages. For all such works of general uplift and inspiration as the intending tourist in Europe might expect to profit by, he depended on circulating libraries or the shelves of friends. I myself lent him a book of travels in the Dolomites, and scarcely know, now, whether I did well or ill. Raymond, in short, was silently, doggedly saving, with the intention of taking a trip--or of making a sojourn--abroad.

The cleavage came in James Prince's front parlor, one Sunday afternoon, and I happened to be present. A very few words sufficed. Raymond's father had picked up a thick little book from the centre-table, the only book in the room, and was looking back and forth between this work--an Italian dictionary--and Raymond himself.

"What do you expect to get out of this?" he asked.

"I expect to learn some Italian," Raymond replied.

"Wouldn't French be more useful?"

"I know all the French I need."

"Where do you expect to use your Italian?"

"In Italy. I didn't go to college."

Impossible to depict the quality of Raymond's tone in speaking these five words. There was no color, no emphasis, no seeming presentation of a case. It was the cool, level statement of a fact; nor did he try to make the fact too pertinent, too cogent. An hour-long oration would not have been more effective. He had calmly taken off a lid and had permitted a look within. His father saw--saw that whatever Raymond, by plus or by minus, might be, he was no longer a boy.

"I know," said James Prince, slowly. He was looking past us both and was opening and shutting the covers of the book unconsciously.

A day or two later, Raymond gave me the rest. His father had asked him how much money he had. Out of his sixty or seventy-five a month Raymond had set aside several hundreds; "and I said I could make the rest by corresponding for some newspaper," he continued. This was in the simple day when travel-letters from Europe were still printed and read in the newspapers, and even "remunerated" by editors. Incredible, perhaps, in this day; yet true for that.

His father had asked him how long he intended to be away. Raymond was non-committal. He might travel for a year, or he might try "living" there for a while--a long while. A matter of funds and of luck, it seemed. His father, without pressing him closely, offered to double whatever sum he had saved up. He appeared neither pleased nor displeased by Raymond's course. He felt I suppose, that the bank would hardly suffer, and that Raymond (whom he did not understand) might get some profit. Fathers have their own opinions of sons, which opinions range, I dare say, all the way from charitableness to desperation. In the case of my own son, I am glad to say, a very slight degree of charitableness was all the tax laid upon me. There were some distressing months of angularity, both in physique and in manners, at seventeen; then a quick and miraculous escape into trimness and grace. And my grandson, now at nine, promises to be, I am glad to state, even more of a success and a pleasure. As for Raymond, he had developed unevenly: his growth had gone athwart.

Possibly the "world," that vast, vague ent.i.ty of which his father's knowledge was restricted almost to one narrow field, might aid in straightening the boy out.

"Well, try it for a year," his father said, not unkindly, and almost wistfully.

VI

When Johnny McComas heard of Raymond's resolve, he drew up his round face into a grimace. He thought the step queer, and he said so. But, "Oh, well, if a fellow can afford it!" he added. And he did not explain just what meaning he attached to the word "afford."

But Johnny could see no valid reason for a fellow's giving the town the go-by at nineteen and at just that stage of the town's development.

Johnny was so made that the community which housed him was necessarily the centre of the cosmos; he himself, howsoever placed, was necessarily at the centre of the circle--so why leave the central dot for some vague situation on the circ.u.mference? And take this particular town: what a present! what a future! what a wide extension over the limitless prairie with every pa.s.sing month!--a prairie which merely needed to be cut up into small checkers and sold to hopeful newcomers; a prairie which produced profits as freely as it produced goldenrod and asters; a prairie upon which home-seekers might settle down under agents whose wide range, running from helpful cooperation to absolute flimflam, need leave no competent "operator" other than rich.

"What are you going to get out of it?" asked Johnny earnestly.

Raymond attempted no set reply. Johnny, he recognized, was out for positive results, for tangible returns; his idea was to get on in the world by definite and unmistakable stages. Raymond never welcomed the idea of "getting on"--not at least in the sense in which his own day and place used the expression. To do so was but to acknowledge some early inferiority. Raymond was not conscious of any inferiority to be overcome. Johnny might, of course, on this particular point, feel as he chose.

About this time old Jehiel Prince began to come more frequently to his son's house. He was yellower and grayer, and he was getting testy and irascible. He sometimes brought his lawyer with him, and the pair made James Prince an active partic.i.p.ant in their concerns. However, Jehiel was perhaps less unhappy here than in his own home. When there, he sat moodily alone, of evenings, in his bas.e.m.e.nt office; and Raymond, who was sometimes sent over with doc.u.ments or with messages, impatiently reported him to me as "glum."

"Poor old fellow! he doesn't know how to live!" said Raymond in complacent pity. He himself, of course, had but to a.s.semble all the bright-hued elements that awaited him a few months ahead to make his own life a poem, a song.

"I can do that," he once said, in a moment when exaltation had briefly made him confidential.

Raymond never saw his grandmother--at least he never cared to see her.

Here, if nowhere else, he was willing to take a cue, and he took it from the head of the family. He thought that so many years of town life might have made her a little less rustic in the end: the York State of 1835 or of 1840 need not have remained York State so immitigably. And if there was a domestic blight on the house he was willing to believe that she was two thirds to blame: behind the old soul was a pack of poor relations. Particularly a brother-in-law--a bilious, cadaverous fellow, whom I saw once, and once was enough. He had been an itinerant preacher farther East, and he lived in a woeful little cottage along one of Jehiel's horse-car routes. His mournful-eyed wife was always asking help. He too had "gone into real-estate," and unsuccessfully. He was the dull reverse of that victorious obverse upon which Johnny McComas was beginning to shine.