The Mystery of Murray Davenport Part 6

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," a.s.serts 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, a.s.sumes a parent's debt. The obligation pa.s.ses 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 mult.i.tude," 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 a.s.serts, "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.

CHAPTER V.

A LODGING BY THE RIVER

The day after his introduction to the Kenbys, Larcher went with Murray Davenport on one of those expeditions incidental to their collaboration as writer and ill.u.s.trator. Larcher had observed an increase of the strange indifference which had appeared through all the artist's loquacity at their first interview. This loquacity was sometimes repeated, but more often Davenport's way was of silence. His apathy, or it might have been abstraction, usually wore the outer look of dreaminess.

"Your friend seems to go about in a trance," Barry Tompkins said of him one day, after a chance meeting in which Larcher had made the two acquainted.

This was a near enough description of the man as he accompanied Larcher to a part of the riverfront not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, on the afternoon at which we have arrived. The two were walking along a squalid street lined on one side with old brick houses containing junk-shops, shipping offices, liquor saloons, sailors' hotels, and all the various establishments that sea-folk use. On the other side were the wharves, with a throng of vessels moored, and glimpses of craft on the broad river.

"Here we are," said Larcher, who as he walked had been referring to a pocket map of the city. The two men came to a stop, and Davenport took from a portfolio an old print of the early nineteenth century, representing part of the river front. Silently they compared this with the scene around them, Larcher smiling at the difference. Davenport then looked up at the house before which they stood. There was a saloon on the ground floor, with a miniature ship and some sh.e.l.ls among the bottles in the window.

"If I could get permission to make a sketch from one of those windows up there," said Davenport, glancing at the first story over the saloon.

"Suppose we go in and see what can be done," suggested Larcher.

They found the saloon a small, homely place, with only one attendant behind the bar at that hour, two marine-looking old fellows playing some sort of a game amidst a cloud of pipe-smoke at a table, and a third old fellow, not marine-looking but resembling a prosperous farmer, seated by himself in the enjoyment of an afternoon paper that was nearly all head-lines.

Larcher ordered drinks, and asked the barkeeper if he knew who lived overhead. The barkeeper, a round-headed young man of unflinching aspect, gazed hard across the bar at the two young men for several seconds, and finally vouchsafed the single word:

"Roomers."

"I should like to see the person that has the front room up one flight,"

began Larcher.

"All right; that won't cost you nothing. There he sets." And the barkeeper pointed to the rural-looking old man with the newspaper, at the same time calling out, sportively: "Hey, Mr. Bud, here's a couple o'

gents wants to look at you."

Mr. Bud, who was tall, spare, and bent, about sixty, and the possessor of a pleasant k.n.o.bby face half surrounded by a gray beard that stretched from ear to ear beneath his lower jaw, dropped his paper and scrutinized the young men benevolently. They went over to him, and Larcher explained their intrusion with as good a grace as possible.